Towards the use of a team of USVs for civilian harbour protection: The problem of intercepting detected menaces

Protecting civilian harbours is a field which has received increasing interest after the attack of September 11th. Exploiting a team of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) for the protection of harbours is one of the areas under major investigation. Indeed the USVs could be used to perform patrolling around the crucial waterways or to investigate possible suspect vessels, increasing the effectiveness of the security system, while at the same time decreasing the number of human beings directly exposed to threats. The coordination of such a team of USVs is the goal of an on-going joint research project, the Swarm Management Unit (SMU), between the authors' organization. This work presents the latest results of the SMU project, i.e. a menace interception system composed by the on-line selection of the best interceptor coupled with the off-line optimization of the positioning of the team of USVs.