The multi-USV mission management problem: Formalization and literature review

Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) have gained prominence in recent years due to their versatility and their ability to operate in hazardous maritime environments, thereby reducing human exposure to risk. As mission complexity increases, the deployment of multiple USVs becomes necessary to achieve scalability, robustness, and operational efficiency. Such multi-USV systems require advanced coordination and cooperation mechanisms to ensure successful mission execution. This paper starts by providing a comprehensive formalization of a decision-making and mission management framework for heterogeneous multi-robot teams in general, particularizing for multi-USV teams where relevant. The proposed formulation systematically covers all stages of the decision-making hierarchy, including goal definition, sub-goal specification and decomposition, task allocation, task planning, and task execution. Framed within this formulation, we present a detailed and structured review of recent advances in task allocation and task planning methodologies, with particular emphasis on approaches developed for maritime applications. To place these contributions in a broader context, we also examine relevant literature from the general multi-robot systems domain, enabling the identification of conceptual similarities, methodological differences, existing research gaps, and promising directions that can be effectively transferred to the maritime environment.