Game Theory for Unmanned Vehicle Path Planning in the Marine Domain: State of the Art and New Possibilities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is a study on the state of the art and new possibilities regarding unmanned vehicles path planning in the marine domain and is considered a valuable study in related fields. The reviewer's opinions are as follows.

1. Abstract should be concisely and clearly described, including the background, purpose, method, result, and conclusion of the study.

2. In the description including abstract, ambiguous expressions should be avoided, and quantitative numerical values or objective grounds should be presented. 

3. It is necessary to describe existing efforts (papers) regarding the problems (not the simple description of the existing studies). The methods that solved the problems perceived in previous similar studies should be described (for highlighting academic excellence on this paper).

4. It is necessary to describe the limitations of the study and additional studies required in the future. And authors should ensure the overall quality of the paper. It is recommended to edit/review expressions, and to describe the interpretation of the research results in an easy-to-understand manner.

It was a pleasure to be able to review such a nice attempt.
Thank you very much.

Author Response

The authors want to thank the reviewer for believing in their work.

As suggested, the authors improved the quality of the work adding further references, proposing more concrete applications of the discussed games, and extended the conclusions providing clearer insights on the future possibilities.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article presents a quite extensive review of state of the art papers and results of differential games problems applied to marine environment. The text is generally well organized and well written. There are minor English misspells, which must be fixed before publication. I will list some of them:

1) Line 55: “disciplines which studies” - study 

2) Line 166: “the problem to scan an are in search” - an area? 

3) Line 288: “KKT” - please add these term to Abbreviations section and explain it in the text

4) Line 315: “The naive version of a rendevouz game, i.e., those involving” - games

5) Line 383: “port-Hamiltonian” - is this a well-known term? I am not familiar, unfortunately. Please explain or fix the spelling. 

6) Line 399: “the authors suggests” - suggest

7) Line 438: “Stackelberg games finds” - find

After dealing with these issues, the article can be accepted for publication, I believe.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,
below we report the answer to the review. For convenience, we have reported the reviewer comments in italics
and our comments in bold face.
The article presents a quite extensive review of state of the art papers and results of differential games
problems applied to marine environment. The text is generally well organized and well written. There are minor
English misspells, which must be fixed before publication. I will list some of them:
1. Line 55: “disciplines which studies” - study
Done.
2. Line 166: “the problem to scan an are in search” - an area?
Done.
3. Line 288: “KKT” - please add these term to Abbreviations section and explain it in the text
Done.
4. Line 315: “The naive version of a rendevouz game, i.e., those involving” - games
Done.
5. Line 383: “port-Hamiltonian” - is this a well-known term? I am not familiar, unfortunately. Please
explain or fix the spelling.
The authors added a reference to port-Hamiltonian systems at line 383. In this way, we
have the guarantee of proper self-consistency of the work without diverting reader’s attention
from the core topic.
6. Line 399: “the authors suggests” - suggest
Done.
7. Line 438: “Stackelberg games finds” - find
Done.
After dealing with these issues, the article can be accepted for publication, I believe.