Mission-Oriented Payloads and Platform Support for Unmanned Surface Vehicles: From Aquatic Observation to Operational Applications

Abstract

Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are increasingly used for hydrographic surveying, environmental monitoring, ecological observation, infrastructure inspection, and underwater search. Previous studies often focus on autonomous navigation, vehicle design, platform types, or individual applications, leaving relationships among mission objectives, payloads, platform support, and data products unclear. This paper examines these relationships for USV tasks beyond routine navigation-related surface perception.

The discussion separates mission payloads from platform-support modules and mission-execution units and considers six groups: hydrographic surveying and mapping; air–sea and environmental observation; water-quality, pollution, and biogeochemical monitoring; ecological surveys, fisheries, and acoustic monitoring; infrastructure inspection; and emergency search support. Within each group, attention is given to measured variables or targets, payload operation, platform dependence, field validation, and data products. Direct numerical comparison is often inappropriate because studies differ in vehicle architecture, payload configuration, environment, validation, and reporting.

Hydrographic surveying and some inspection tasks show the clearest repeatable workflows and products. Field studies also demonstrate air–sea observation, water-quality mapping, ecological monitoring, fisheries acoustics, and underwater-search tasks, with performance dependent on platform design and operating conditions. Target-specific chemical sensing, pollution-source attribution, autonomous environmental DNA sampling, biogeochemical flux estimation, and complete rescue or recovery operations remain limited or platform-specific. Across applications, sensor specifications alone provide an incomplete indication of mission capability. Reliable results depend on positioning and attitude references, power, communications, installation geometry, environmental protection, calibration, and quality control. Further development is needed in modular payload integration, long-duration reliability, onboard processing, multi-platform cooperation, and consistent data and metadata practices.