The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) has existed for over 30 years in various forms and utilizing increasingly advanced subsystems. While the first AUV's were mainly experimental and used for research purposes, today we are seeing a growing number of varied AUV applications. In the past, users have been primarily military and although the military interest will not likely subside there is now an increasing level of interest in the commercial and scientific sectors. This has been driven not only by the ever present need to remain competitive and to perform more demanding tasks, but also by the realization that AUV technology has matured sufficiently to make a positive contribution to specific classes of marine work tasks. Many of these fall under the general category of survey operations. For these applications, the survey class AUV has subsystems which are common to all users. These subsystems include structure, ballast, energy storage, control, navigation, propulsion and communications. Each is examined and its impact on the survey class AUV is discussed. Examples of integrated AUV systems are given with applications and field data on operating characteristics.
In the last ten years, there has been a significant increase in the performance of critical AUV technologies. This has resulted in a technology push from the AUV sector. At the same time there has been increased requirement for greater ocean knowledge from the commercial and scientific communities creating an applications pull. This now appears to have the momentum to promote the utilization of AUVs in missions which were previously carried out by other technologies, or perhaps in missions never before considered. They are unique because the tasks are low in complexity and the capacity exists to provide a long term economic benefit to a diverse group of users.
