If uncrewed systems are to make the most of the opportunities offered by the need to secure large and often complex sites, they will have to exploit automation as far as possible, ensure safety and cost-effectiveness, and stay on the right side of the regulators...

Many UAVs and USVs now come fitted with solar panels covering much of their surfaces. The interest in solar energy comes from more than it being a potentially limitless source of green power; for uncrewed systems it extends autonomy in a practical sense.

Now that the presence of water ice on Mars has been confirmed, many organizations have committed themselves to establishing a human presence on the planet – NASA in particular...

Many UUV platforms that are now well-known have been developed and supplied to civil, commercial and military markets since the 1990s...

In the world of autonomous and intelligent systems, competencies developed in one type of vehicle can enable major breakthroughs for others. The marine sector in particular has benefited from innovations originally engineered elsewhere...

Road freight is vital to the US economy. The industry is worth more than $800 billion, and readers in the US can safely assume that two-thirds of the objects around them were transported at some point in a Class 8 truck such as the archetypical five-axle 18-wheeler...

While 5G phones are now widely available, and network operators are rolling out commercial 5G networks in urban areas around the world, the technology is also being developed with uncrewed systems in mind...

Mining is generally considered a particularly damaging activity for the environment, and the prospect of mining the seabed for industrially important metals is a controversial one (writes Peter Donaldson). It is also a major focus for developments in robotic technologies...

As reported in the past in this publication, the traditional helicopter configuration has long left something to be desired among military and civilian end-users. Commonly cited weaknesses include the maintenance costs of their swashplate and other moving parts, the vulnerability of the tail rotor, and a tendency towards mechanical failures in mid-flight...

Machine learning (ML) and AI are used in many different ways and in different parts of uncrewed systems for a range of functions to boost their performance. For example, AI is used extensively for applications based on image processing....