###### Abstract  
With the significant role that Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) could play in industry, the military and the transformation of ocean engineering, a growing research interest in USVs is attracted to their innovation, new technology and automation. Yet, there has been no comprehensive review grounded in bibliometric analysis, which concentrates on the most recent technological advancements and developments in USVs. To provide deeper insight into the relevant research trends, this study employs a bibliometric analysis to examine the basic features of the literature from 2000 to 2023, and identifies the key research hotspots and modeling techniques by reviewing their current statuses and the recent efforts made in these areas. Based on the analysis of the temporal and spatial trends, disciplines and journals' distribution, institutions, authors and citations, the publications relating to the new technology of USVs are assessed based on their keywords and the term analysis in the literature; six future research directions are proposed, including enhanced intelligence and autonomy, highly integrated sensor systems and multi-modal task execution, extended endurance and resilience, satellite communication and interconnectivity, eco-friendly and sustainable practices and safety and defense. The scientific literature is reviewed in a systematic way using a comparative analysis of existing tools, and the results greatly contribute to understanding the overall situation of new technology in USVs. This paper is enlightening to students, international scholars and institutions, as it can facilitate partnerships between industry and academia to allow for concerted efforts to be made in the domain of USVs. Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV); research trends; bibliometric analysis; research hotspots; VOSview +
Footnote †: journal: Marine Science and Engineering  
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weapons for various applications, and describes key technologies such as high-performance crafts, control systems, communication technology, collision avoidance and mission planning [4]. The collaborative system of Multiple Unmanned Surface Vehicles (MUSVs) has shown broad prospects in the field of civil and military applications [3]. To enhance the accuracy, a combined Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) for the position and velocity tracking of under-actuated surface vessels, and the collision avoidance of static and dynamic objects into a single control scheme with side slip angle compensation and environmental disturbance counteraction, was presented and achieved high validity [5]. A novel path-planning methodologies for autonomous maritime vessels, including USVs, has been developed to operate efficiently in intricate and dynamic marine settings. This approach ensures rapid, reliable and definitive navigational solutions, even in scenarios characterized by multiple mobile maritime vessels and stationary hindrances, while also accommodating the variable and unforeseen maneuvers of surrounding vessels [6]. With the advent of machine learning, more research was focused on communication, remote sensing and connected automation, exemplified by a new autonomous data collection with dynamic goals and communication constraints for marine vehicles [7]; it was also focused on a powerful unmanned boat remote-control platform that can realize remote display sensing data, remote motion control functions and can ensure the unmanned boat under the safety requirements of various experiments [8], as well as a concurrent kinematic control lactic introduced for the landing of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) on USVs to mitigate the challenges of diminished precision and potential landing failures caused by the USVs' surface motion due to wave activity [9]. Despite increasingly growing interest in USVs, there is a lack of a systematic overview of solutions proposed in the scientific literature.