The article considers the relevance of unmanned vessels (UV). Over the past decade, many countries have been developing UV of different classes and the interest in UV is growing every year. That is why Russia actively engaged in this process within the framework of the National Technology Initiative. The relevance of crewless shipping (CS) is beyond doubt. Safety is one of the main conditions for high–quality transportation by any type of transport. The main and most frequent cause of accidents at sea remains the human factor. We should not ignore that technological progress presents both opportunities and challenges. The problem of regulatory support remains. Pioneer-M is the first unmanned research vessel in Russia. The training of specialists in the field of unmanned vessels operation is one of the most complex challenges. There is a need to introduce an educational program to train unmanned vessel operators and to retrain navigators of traditional type.