Capabilities
Are there autonomous ships?
Yes, but almost none of them are the ship you are picturing. The registry holds reviewed deployments of uncrewed and autonomously navigated surface vessels off Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, the Bering Sea, Norway, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Australia and India. Nearly all of them are small craft: survey boats selling ocean data, wave and solar-powered vehicles that stay out for months, and defence vessels for mine countermeasures and patrol. The crewless cargo ship that the phrase autonomous ship usually conjures is represented on this record by a single vessel. The evidence is also uneven, in one way that is particular to this class: a number of these records are cited partly to a company's bare front page, which cannot substantiate that a given vessel worked at a given place. The page counts that rather than smoothing it over.
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Yes, with two qualifications that matter more than the answer.
What is actually out there. The reviewed record is dominated by small uncrewed surface vessels: hydrographic and offshore-wind survey boats, wind and solar-powered vehicles that stay at sea for months gathering ocean and fisheries data, and defence craft for mine countermeasures, patrol and anti-submarine work. Several entries are not vessels at all but autonomy systems fitted to existing crewed workboats, which is a different claim again and is rendered in each record's own words.
The ship most people mean. A large crewless cargo vessel is represented on this record by one ship, operating a short coastal route in Norway, alongside a separate demonstrator programme in Japan. Everything else on the page is smaller, or is a system rather than a hull.
How good the evidence is. Uneven, and the page leads with that instead of burying it. Roughly half the reviewed vessels and systems in this class carry no deployment record at all. Well over a third of the deployment records that do exist carry no start date. And a distinctive weakness shows up here that DEPLOY's other deployment pages do not have: a number of these records are cited partly to a company's bare front page, a link that cannot substantiate that a particular vessel worked at a particular place and will say something different next year. Each of those counts is shown, per row and in total.
What the page will not claim. That a vessel or system with no deployment record has never been to sea. Some of those records are the same hardware held under a second, narrower entry, which the page names rather than quietly merging. Counts here are counts of records DEPLOY holds, never fleets and never a market.
How much of this is actually recorded
This class is almost entirely marked operational, so a lifecycle split would say nothing. What it genuinely varies on is how well evidenced each deployment is, and those numbers lead the page rather than sitting in a footnote.
- Vessels with recorded use
- 17 of 32
- Records with no start date
- 8 of 19
- Records citing a front page
- 8 of 19
18 entries drawn from 19 reviewed deployment records across 17 makers at 17 distinct places, carrying 52 sources in total. 3 of the records rest entirely on the maker’s own domain, and 8 of the 52 sources are a bare company front page rather than a page that makes the claim. Records with no start date render as not yet on record rather than being given an invented one.
Three different claims, kept apart
Each column is attributed to what it actually describes. The third is the claim DEPLOY refuses to make.
Uncrewed boats, at named places
Every entry is a reviewed deployment at a port, coast or ocean region the registry holds, with its own status and its own sources, read live at page load. Most are small survey and defence craft, and several are autonomy systems fitted to existing crewed vessels rather than uncrewed hulls.
A crewless cargo ship
That vessel exists on this record, and it is one ship on a short coastal route, alongside a separate demonstrator programme. Reading the class as a fleet of driverless container ships would invert what the registry actually holds.
That the absences mean anything
Roughly half the reviewed models here carry no deployment record, and some of those are the same hardware held under a second, narrower entry. That is an absence in DEPLOY's record, never a finding that a vessel has not been to sea.
In service on the record
What the registry marks operational, most recent first. Each vessel or system is described in its own model record’s words.
Jaldoot is an autonomous surface vessel (ASV) built by Rekise Marine, delivered to DRDO through Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE). Maker on the record: Rekise Marine.
Maritime Robotics (founded 2005 in Trondheim, Norway by founder and chief executive Vegard Evjen Hovstein) makes the Otter, a small all-electric catamaran survey uncrewed surface vessel for sheltered and coastal waters, and the Mariner X... Maker on the record: Maritime Robotics.
In service on the recordJun 1, 2023 (as reported)Sea Machines Robotics (Boston; founded by Michael Johnson) is an autonomy-system vendor for surface vessels rather than a vessel maker: its SM300 and SM200 autonomous-command systems are vessel-agnostic retrofit kits, about ten component... Maker on the record: Sea Machines Robotics. Every source behind this entry is on the maker's own domain.
In service on the recordAug 1, 2022 (as reported)
Ended
Deployments the registry marks as ended. The registry’s ended does not separate a completed campaign from an abandoned one, so the page renders the record’s own word and does not invent an outcome. A machine can hold an ended record at one place and an in-service record at another, and it appears in both sections rather than being flattened into one posture.
Fleet of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and AUVs for autonomous seabed survey and search operations. Maker on the record: Ocean Infinity. 1 of them carry no start date on the record.
Recorded vessels with no recorded use
15 of the 32 reviewed models in this class carry no deployment record. Read that carefully: it is an absence in DEPLOY’s record, not a finding that these vessels have never been to sea. Some of them are the same hardware held under a second, narrower record, where a maker’s individual vessel classes are listed alongside a combined entry for the family. Whether those are one entity or several is the review lane’s call, and this page does not merge them or assert that they are duplicates.
| Vessel or system | Maker |
|---|---|
| Blue Water autonomous ship (Liberty Class) | Blue Water Autonomy |
| Corsair | Saronic Technologies |
| Cutlass | Saronic Technologies |
| MARS | SubSea Craft |
| MMUSV | Marakeb Technologies |
| Pioneer-class H-USV | ACUA Ocean |
| River Drone 5 | River Drone |
| STORMRUNNER | Sea Machines Robotics |
| Sagar USV | Sagar Defence Engineering |
| Smart Marine System | Wärtsilä |
| Spectre | Saildrone |
| Spyglass | Saronic Technologies |
| Surveyor | Saildrone |
| Swadheen | Rekise Marine |
| Voyager | Saildrone |
How we know this
Every vessel and system on this page is a deployment record on the DEPLOY registry, read live at page load, with its own place, its own dated start where the record holds one, and its own sources. Each machine is described in its own model record's words, because the registry holds no structured field for vessel role in this class and inventing one here would be a judgement rather than a reading. Here are the sources behind them.
Two sourcing tests run over these records. The first asks whether every source behind an entry sits on the maker's own domain. The second counts citations that are a bare company front page, which cannot substantiate a claim about a particular vessel at a particular place. The complement of the first is labelled not only the maker's own domain and never independent: a customer's own site and a press-release wire are neither the maker nor disinterested.
Common questions
Are there really crewless cargo ships?
What are autonomous ships used for?
Who makes autonomous ships?
Are autonomous ships legal?
How many autonomous ships are there?
How reliable is this evidence?
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