Towards the Use of a Team of USVs for Civilian Harbour Protection: USV Interception of Detected Menaces

The protection of civilian harbours has received an increasing interest after September 11th. One of the areas currently under major investigation is the use of a team of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), which could be exploited for patrolling purposes and to investigate suspect situations, increasing the effectiveness of the harbor protection system while lowering the number of humans directly exposed to threats. To achieve such aims, the USVs must be properly coordinated by an intelligent Swarm Management Unit (SMU), whose realization is the goal of an on-going research project carried out by the authors' organizations. This paper presents the latest results of the SMU project, i.e. a menace interception system, that off-line optimizes the positioning of the USV team and on-line selects the most suitable USV for intercepting any possible menace.