AUV Design

Twenty years ago, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were an infant technology, and there was an absence of evolution to guide designers in deciding the fundamental shape and size of their craft. Since this period, researchers have tried a wide variety of AUV shapes and sizes, including torpedo shapes, like the National Oceanography Centre's (NOC) Autosub and Hydroid's (Pocasset, Massachusetts) REMUS; laminar flow bodies, like the early Kongsberg Maritime (Kongsberg, Norway) HUGIN vehicles; streamlined rectangular styles, like Atlas Elektronik GmbH's (Bremen, Germany) Sea Otter; and multihull vehicles, like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's (WHOI) Autonomous Benthic Explorer (ABE). Each came with a vision of fulfilling a certain set of requirements and an oceanographic niche.