One way to meet these demands is the concept of autonomous unmanned vessels for intercontinental voyages.

The increasing concerns for safety and environmental sustainability create demands on the development of future maritime transportation strategies. The successful I-SCC construction, the preliminary experiments, and the design-extension demonstrate that the I-SCC can serve as an experimental platform for both mechatronic innovation and human-automation integration research in the inland waterway sector, whilst additionally providing fruitful knowledge for adjacent research domains.

This enhancement enables further performance insights and might improve the future monitoring of USVs. The Hull-To-Hull project extends the current I-SCC by providing enhanced motion control. The conducted experiments offered insights into the performance of both the I-SCC system and its operator, and unlock research on the impact on ship sense and harmony when remotely controlling a USV. This I-SCC can help its operator to develop situational awareness and sensemaking. Accordingly, this study investigated the concept and design requirements to achieve an inland I-SCC that provides interaction services when supervising an unmanned surface vessel (USV). A key enabler of this envisaged shift may be an inland shore control centre (I-SCC) capable of remotely monitoring and controlling inland vessels. This increase might potentially induce a sustainable paradigm shift in the road-dominated inland cargo transport sector. Augmenting the automation level of the inland waterway cargo transport sector, coupled with mechatronic innovation in this sector, could increase its competitiveness.

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