The Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) or Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) are vessels that operates on the water surface without any crew. They are remotely controlled and can be controlled by an operator located on land or on board of another vessel. Thereby maintaining a first line of defense or perform inspections of other ships, etc… while manned boats are kept at a safe distance, avoiding unnecessary risks.

USV are valuable for oceanographic applications, as they are more useful than the weather buoys, but more cost-effective than the weather ships or equivalent research vessels, and more adaptable than commercial vessels. With them you can make bathymetry, exploration and mapping of the marine funds, and can make tracking of large mammals for biological studies. There are USV that are powered by the energy of the waves and from their solar cells, achieving to have months of maritime autonomy.

Target USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicle)

The USV are usually resistant, stable, stealthy, fast and highly maneuverable; normally its main military application is act as maritime mobile target for military training and for tests of defense systems. But they have a wide variety of applications such as protection forces, anti-piracy forces, anti-terrorism forces, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare and mining.

In these additional applications, USV offer greater capacity for surveillance, identification and interception compared to traditional systems. It can be equipped with stabilized weapons systems, with surveillance systems and electro optical tracking systems capable of monitoring both day and night by using infrared vision.

Veronte Autopilot integration on USV

Some of the main performance and capabilities increase of the USV powered by Veronte Autopilot are:

  • Fully autonomous control of the USV.
  • Improved safety systems: no go areas and safe areas, configurable actions on a system failure or a data link loss (go home, system disconnect, shooting flares, light ignition, …), etc…
  • Ability to control multiple USV, as well as combinations of USV with tethered drone from a single control station.
  • Veronte permits the configuration of missions relative to the control station which can be located in both on land or on another boat.
  • “Follow me” function for all kinds of tracking, as track of mammals, other vessels, etc…
  • Veronte Autopilot is compatible with all kind of vehicles: solar boats, catamarans, motorboats, …
  • Automatic routines configuration depending on the information captured by the sensors.
  • Satellite communications with global coverage.