Review of Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) Developments 
According to report joint author, John Westwood, the major technical challenges are “to reduce 
costs of ownership and to provide cost-effective systems for operations in ever-increasing water 
depths. One approach is the use of all-electric ROVs (most existing machines are electro- 
hydraulic systems) involving aerospace standard power systems and a total redesign to reduce 
component count and the numbers of electrical connections exposed to seawater.” 
AUVs, the new kids on the block, are true pre-programmed robots, increasingly capable of 
carrying out underwater survey and other missions without direct human control. AUVs entered 
commercial service in 2000, and if industry expectations are achieved, the authors believe that 
annual sales could grow to over 30 units in 2004 and AUVs account for 20% of UUV operations 
revenues. Two thirds of AUV revenues are expected from their use in seabed survey. (See 
Table 12.) 
Financing UUV development remains a problem. Despite the growth of the telecommunications 
market, the major end-users of UUVs are the oil and gas companies. Their corporate objectives 
preclude most of them from direct investments in the development of new technology, regarding 
this as the role of the technology providers — the underwater service contractors. 
Table 12. Report Projections of Growth 
Operations ($m) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 00-04 
Work-Class 
ROVs 501 565 695 747 817 3325 
AUVs 2 9 26 59 112 207 
total $m 503 574 720 806 928 3532 
OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 
The number of UUVs of various types has increased each year over the period of this report. 
The spectrum of vehicles includes those for military, scientific, and industrial uses. The 
complexity of missions, depth, range, and mission duration has increased over this period. 
Launch and recovery considerations, less glamorous than the UUVs themselves, have not 
received the deserved emphasis necessary to elevate the operational efficiency of UUV 
systems. Docking stations, designed to download data from UUVs, recharge batteries, and 
program the UUV for its next mission, are advancing quickly. 
Industry, who earlier postponed interest in UUVs until they were confident in the technology, 
appears now to be reasonably comfortable in applying UUVs as tools. UUVs are now in use 
commercially in survey work. Commercial acceptance of UUVs has begun! The future for UUV 
use is great. Sensors and energy systems demand attention to speed the technical advances 
and operational uses of UUVs. 
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