Unmanned Marine Vehicles for Rescue Operations at Sea
The proposed research is aimed at inventing, designing and prototyping a new unmanned marine vehicle for rescue operations of the man at sea. The new system is a robotized vessel that is launched automatically when the survey system reveals a man is falling outboard. The vehcile is able to resist to a violent water entry when released from the ship bridge and navigates auonomously towards the man at sea. Once the man is reached, the vehicle is able to host the man on board even if the man is not cooperating.
There are good reasons to develop such a new technology that can enhance in a significant manner the onboard safey.
Many of the cargo ships for goods, gas and oil transportation have a crew that in rough seas risks, in operations on external bridges, to fall into the sea. In these cases the rescue systems, in the current state of the art, are extremely ineffective with a high probability of losing a human life. These problems are common to cargo ship as welL as to passenger cruise ships. The system here proposed represents a breakthrough in the field of marine operation safety.