International navigation rules governing the unmanned vessels

Shipping by unmanned ships is a future matter of the maritime transport and has many benefits to ship owners, shipping industry, the environment, and so on. The prototype of unmanned commercial ships will enter the international maritime trade in the coming years. The entry of these ships will increase navigation safety, and consequently the various marine events will decrease significantly. One of the innovations of these ships is to remove of the crew on board of directors. One of the most important issues is the rules governing these ships. In according to that the technology of these ships is modern, and most of the marine laws are in the same way in the nineteenth century, the lack of a proper legal framework is very certain. In this study, various international maritime conventions will be discussed. Also, it is a summary of whether the current rules include the unmanned ships or not? Do these conventions create challenges for the unmanned ships? And how do the unmanned ships comply with the rules of these conventions? This article will first look at the state of transport on the unmanned ships. Afterward, it will address the benefits and challenges of these ships, and finally, legal challenges and barriers to the use of unmanned ships will be discussed. In particular, this section will investigate whether an unmanned ship is still a ship or not, and how it can handle the duties and responsibilities of the shipping laws? Furthermore, this is an attempt to identify the various aspects of lack of legality by using existing legal frameworks and international conventions. The results showed that the unmanned ships, like other ships, should comply with the current rules and regulations governing shipping.