An autonomous underwater vehicle is a robot which travels underwater without
requiring input from an operator. AUVs constitute part of a larger group of
undersea systems known as unmanned underwater vehicles, a classification
that includes non-autonomous remotely operated underwater vehicles –
controlled and powered from the surface by an operator/pilot via an umbilical or
using remote control. In military applications AUVs are more often
referred to simply as unmanned undersea vehicles.
History The first AUV was developed at the
Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington as early as
1957 by Stan Murphy, Bob Francois and later on, Terry Ewart. The "Special
Purpose Underwater Research Vehicle", or SPURV, was used to study diffusion,
acoustic transmission, and submarine wakes.
Other early AUVs were developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
the 1970s. One of these is on display in the Hart Nautical Gallery in MIT. At the
same time, AUVs were also developed in the Soviet Union.
Applications Until relatively recently, AUVs have
been used for a limited number of tasks dictated by the technology available.
With the development of more advanced processing capabilities and high yield
power supplies, AUVs are now being used for more and more tasks with roles and
missions constantly evolving. = Commercial =
The oil and gas industry uses AUVs to make detailed maps of the seafloor
before they start building subsea infrastructure; pipelines and sub sea
completions can be installed in the most cost effective manner with minimum
disruption to the environment. The AUV allows survey companies to conduct
precise surveys of areas where traditional bathymetric surveys would be
less effective or too costly. Also, post-lay pipe surveys are now possible.
= Research = Scientists use AUVs to study lakes, the
ocean, and the ocean floor. A variety of sensors can be affixed to AUVs to
measure the concentration of various elements or compounds, the absorption or
reflection of light, and the presence of microscopic life. Additionally, AUVs can
be configured as tow-vehicles to deliver customized sensor packages to specific
locations. = Hobby =
Many roboticists construct AUVs as a hobby. Several competitions exist which
allow these homemade AUVs to compete against each other while accomplishing
objectives. Like their commercial brethren, these AUVs can be fitted with
cameras, lights, or sonar. As a consequence of limited resources and
inexperience, hobbyist AUVs can rarely compete with commercial models on
operational depth, durability, or sophistication. Finally, these hobby
AUVs are usually not oceangoing, being operated most of the time in pools or
lake beds. A simple AUV can be constructed from a microcontroller, PVC
pressure housing, automatic door lock actuator, syringes, and a DPDT relay.
Some participants in competitions create open-source designs.
= Illegal drug traffic = Submarines that travel autonomously to a
destination by means of GPS navigation have been made by illegal drug
traffickers. = Air crash investigations =
Autonomous underwater vehicles, for example AUV ABYSS, have been used to
find wreckages of missing airplanes, e.g. Air France Flight 447.
Vehicle designs Hundreds of different AUVs have been
designed over the past 50 or so years, but only a few companies sell vehicles
in any significant numbers. There are around 10 companies that sell AUVs on
the international market, including Kongsberg Maritime, Hydroid), Bluefin
Robotics, Teledyne Gavia, and International Submarine Engineering Ltd.
Vehicles range in size from man portable lightweight AUVs to large diameter
vehicles of over 10 metres length. Large vehicle have advantages in terms of
endurance and sensor payload capacity; smaller vehicles benefit significantly
from lower logistics. Some manufacturers have benefited from
domestic government sponsorship including Bluefin and Kongsberg. The
market is effectively split into three areas: scientific, commercial offshore
and military application. The majority of these roles utilize a similar design
and operate in a cruise mode. They collect data while following a
preplanned route at speeds between 1 and 4 knots.
Commercially available AUVs include various designs such as the small REMUS
100 AUV originally developed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US
and now produced commercially by Hydroid, Inc.; the larger HUGIN 1000 and
3000 AUVs developed by Kongsberg Maritime and Norwegian Defence Research
Establishment; the Bluefin Robotics 12-and-21-inch-diameter vehicles and the
International Submarine Engineering Ltd. Most AUVs follow the traditional torpedo
shape as this is seen as the best compromise between size, usable volume,
hydrodynamic efficiency and ease of handling. There are some vehicles that
make use of a modular design, enabling components to be changed easily by the
operators. The market is evolving and designs are
now following commercial requirements rather than being purely developmental.
Upcoming designs include hover-capable AUVs for inspection and
light-intervention, and hybrid AUV/ROV designs that switch between roles as
part of their mission profile. Again, the market will be driven by financial
requirements and the aim to save money and expensive ship time.
Today, while most AUVs are capable of unsupervised missions most operators
remain within range of acoustic telemetry systems in order to maintain a
close watch on their investment. This is not always possible. For example, Canada
has recently taken delivery of two AUVs to survey the sea floor underneath the
Arctic ice in support of their claim under Article 76 of the United Nations
Convention of the Law of the Sea. Also, ultra-low-power, long-range variants
such as underwater gliders are becoming capable of operating unattended for
weeks or months in littoral and open ocean areas, periodically relaying data
by satellite to shore, before returning to be picked up.
As of 2008, a new class of AUVs are being developed, which mimic designs
found in nature. Although most are currently in their experimental stages,
these biomimetic vehicles are able to achieve higher degrees of efficiency in
propulsion and maneuverability by copying successful designs in nature.
Two such vehicles are Festo's AquaJelly and Evologics' Bionic Manta. In
2012-2013, a group of 9 Ocean Engineering Undergraduate students from
Florida Atlantic University developed a Biomimetic Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
that was vision based and had the propulsion mimicking a frog. The BUUV
had two kicking legs and a thruster for vertical propulsion.
= Sensors = Primarily oceanographic tools, AUVs
carry sensors to navigate autonomously and map features of the ocean. Typical
sensors include compasses, depth sensors, sidescan and other sonars,
magnetometers, thermistors and conductivity probes. A demonstration at
Monterey Bay in California in September 2006 showed that a 21-inch diameter AUV
can tow a 400 feet long hydrophone array while maintaining a 6-knot cruising
speed. = Navigation =
Radio waves can not penetrate water very far, so as soon as an AUV dives it loses
its GPS signal. Therefore, a standard way for AUVs to navigate underwater is
through dead reckoning. Navigation can however be improved by using an
underwater acoustic positioning system. When operating within a net of sea floor
deployed baseline transponders this is known as LBL navigation. When a surface
reference such as a support ship is available, ultra-short baseline or
short-baseline positioning is used to calculate where the subsea vehicle is
relative to the known position of the surface craft by means of acoustic range
and bearing measurements. To improve estimation of its position, and reduce
errors in dead reckoning, the AUV can also surface and take its own GPS fix.
Between position fixes and for precise maneuvering, an Inertial Navigation
System on board the AUV calculates through dead reckoning the AUV position,
acceleration, and velocity. Estimates can be made using data from a Inertial
Measurement Unit, and can be improved by adding a Doppler Velocity Log, which
measures the rate of travel over the sea/lake floor. Typically, a pressure
sensor measures the vertical position, although this can also be obtained from
DVL measurements. These observations are filtered to determine a final navigation
solution. = Propulsion =
AUVs can rely on a number of propulsion techniques, but propeller based
thrusters or Kort nozzles are the most common by far. These thrusters are
usually powered by electric motors and sometimes rely on a lip seal in order to
protect the motor internals from corrosion. One consideration which
impacts this process of waterproofing is the decision to use brushed motors or
brushless motors. This same consideration also impacts reliability,
efficiency, and cost. Underwater gliders do not directly
propel themselves. By changing their buoyancy and trim, they repeatedly sink
and ascend; airfoil "wings" then convert this up-and-down motion to forward
motion. Because of their low speed and lowpower electronics, the energy
required to cycle trim states is far less than for regular AUVs, and gliders
can have endurances of months and transoceanic ranges.
= Power = Most AUVs in use today are powered by
rechargeable batteries, and are implemented with some form of Battery
Management System. Some vehicles use primary batteries which provide perhaps
twice the endurance—at a substantial extra cost per mission. A few of the
larger vehicles are powered by aluminum based semi-fuel cells, but these require
substantial maintenance, require expensive refills and produce waste
product that must be handled safely. An emerging trend is to combine different
battery and power systems with supercapacitors.
See also Intervention AUV
TIETEK Underwater glider
Bionics, Biomimetics Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Office of Naval Research National Oceanography Centre,
Southampton DeepC
National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology
AUV-150 REMUS
MAYA AUV References
= Bibliography = Technology and Applications of
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Gwyn Griffiths ISBN 978-0-415-30154-1
Review of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Developments ISBN 978-1-155-10695-3
Masterclass in AUV Technology for Polar Science ISBN 978-0-906940-48-8
The Operation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles2 ISBN 978-0-906940-40-2
1996 Symposium on Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology ISBN
978-0-7803-3185-3 Development of an Autonomous Underwater
Vehicle ISBN 978-3-639-09644-6 Optimal Control System for A
Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle ISBN 978-3-639-24545-5
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles ISBN 978-1-4398-1831-2
Recommended Code of Practice for the Operation of Autonomous Marine Vehicles
ISBN 978-0-906940-51-8 Autonomer Mobiler Roboter ISBN
978-1-158-80510-5 Remotely operated underwater vehicle
ISBN 978-613-0-30144-6 Underwater Robots ISBN 978-3-540-31752-4
The World AUV Market Report 2010-2019 ISBN 978-1-905183-48-7
External links = Collection of groups and projects =
NOAA, Ocean Explorer AUVfest 2008: What Are AUVs, and Why Do We Use Them?
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Prosapien LLC
Saab Seaeye AUV,ROV & Underwater Robotics
Browseable AUV database at AUVAC.org GREX - Scientific research for AUV
coordination and control Ocean Systems Laboratory - Heriot-Watt
University, Scotland First AUV to cross Atlantic Ocean
Displayed at Smithsonian Presentation of the AUV Abyss
The Tavros project at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science
The Earhart Project = Application papers =
The Application of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology in the Oil Industry –
Vision and Experiences