Ocean Engineering 88 (2014) 627630

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Ocean Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

A brief taxonomy of autonomous underwater vehicle design literature

Khairul Alam n, Tapabrata Ray, Sreenatha G. Anavatti
School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, UNSW Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia

art ic l e i nf o
Article history:
Received 30 June 2013
Accepted 26 April 2014
Available online 10 May 2014
Keywords:
Autonomous underwater vehicle

Approximately three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered

by water in the form of lakes, rivers, seas or oceans. The surface
area covered by water on the Earth is ten times larger than the
surface area of the Moon (Ross, 2006). While mankind is actively
pursuing explorations of the Moon and outer space, in its backyard
around 95% of the world's oceans and 99% of the ocean oor still
remain unexplored (Mohseni, 2006). The quest for understanding
what lies below the water bodies has motivated the development
of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).
AUVs are robotic mobile instrument carriers that have selfcontained propulsion, sensors and intelligence, allowing them to
successfully complete sampling and survey tasks with little or no
human intervention (Chryssostomidis and Schmidt, 2006). One of
the early attempts was the development of Special Purpose
Underwater Research Vehicle, or SPURV to study diffusion, acoustic transmission, and submarine wakes. With signicant developments in articial intelligence, control theory, and computer
hardware, totally autonomous underwater vehicles have become
a reality (Chryssostomidis and Schmidt, 2006). Being untethered
and independent, AUVs provide a platform for ocean exploration
and ll in the gap left by existing manned submersibles and
remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) (Shah, 2007).
Over the last few decades, ocean research and exploration have
gained a lot of momentum driven by the advances in research,
development and successful commercial implementation of AUV
technologies. As part of the current research, a survey was done
based on a search made on Scopus that covers nearly 18,000 titles
from more than 5000 international publishers, including coverage
of 16,500 peer-reviewed journals in the scientic, technical,
medical and social sciences eld, with the keywords AUV or
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. From the survey, 5393 most
n

Corresponding author. Tel.: 61 2 6268 8479; fax: 61 2 6268 8276.

E-mail address: k.alam@adfa.edu.au (K. Alam).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2014.04.027
0029-8018/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

relevant articles that were published before June 2013 have been
used to conduct a research trend analysis. As illustrated in Fig. 1,
the AUV research trend shows a steep climb in the number of
published articles indicating increased research emphasis in
recent years.
AUVs provide a new marine platform that has proven to be an
asset in many areas of oceanographic research and exploration.
Consequently, there has been a growing interest in AUV research
among several communities. These include the use of deep water
AUVs to map bathymetry around oil wells, surveillance or mine
information gathering by the navies, and a host of scientic and
engineering communities for data collection (Desa et al., 2006),
oceanographic measurements in adverse weather (Shome et al.,
2008).
The wide range of applications has resulted in development of
AUVs with a variety of shapes, sizes, working depth limits, sources
of energy and means of propulsion. The specics of the mission
determine these features (Chyba, 2009). Fig. 2 shows a classication of AUVs that are currently being used.
A global search on a number of AUV research and development
projects indicates around 155 unique congurations in different
stages of use and development (AUVAC, 2012). An extensive
classication of these AUVs is presented in Fig. 3.
Based on the above survey, the following observations can be
made:

AUV technology has evolved from concept demonstrators to

commercial products (Vestgard et al., 2001) and they are

routinely being used for military and civilian applications
(Woolsey and Techy, 2009). Despite signicant progress, AUV
design still poses signicant challenges due to its varied nature
of applications (Jun et al., 2009).
AUVs appear in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The shape
and the size of an AUV dictate its performance such as

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K. Alam et al. / Ocean Engineering 88 (2014) 627630

minimum drag, minimum ow separation, improved vehicle

stability and adequate space for accommodating necessary
hardware (Shome et al., 2008). These considerations tend to
prefer a torpedo-shape body based on the classical Myring

AUV Research Trend

Number of articles published

600

500
400
300
200
100
0

1970

1980

1990
Year

2000

2010

Fig. 1. AUV research trend.

(1976) hull prole equations. Therefore, a majority of the

researchers have chosen medium size torpedo shaped AUVs.
In addition, torpedo shaped AUVs have advantages in areas
such as modularity, ease in launch and recovery, exibility in
the arrangement of wet end transducers, and attainability of
higher speed with less propulsive power as compared to nontorpedo or torpedo-with-wings shaped AUVs.
Most of the designs focus on AUVs with a working depth of
more than 300 m, while surface layer AUVs have had little
attention.
The sources of power for AUVs are dictated by several factors
such as mission endurance, speed requirements, vehicle size
and weight constraints, and energy reserve requirements. Most
AUVs in use today are powered by low cost rechargeable
batteries. A few of the larger vehicles are powered by solid
Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) (Hyakudome et al., 2002),
aluminium/oxygen fuel cell (Vestgard et al., 2001) and by solar
energy (Jalbert et al., 2003) where endurance is a critical issue.
However, they require substantial maintenance and expensive
rells for continuous deployment. Therefore, battery powered
inexpensive AUVs tend to be more widely preferred.
Although a majority of AUVs are equipped with propeller and
rudder mounted at the tail on the centre line for propulsion
and steering (Alvarez et al., 2009b), using jet-pumps for
propulsion and steering is also an option. Pump and jet systems
Torpedo
Shape

Torpedo + Wings
Non-torpedo

Geometry
Size

Large (> 4 m)
Medium (1-4 m)
Small (< 1 m)

Working depth
Short range
(<= 100 km)
Cruising range
Operability
Endurance/
Run-time
Academic
Research

Military
Battery

Scope of
Applications

AUV

Solar
Civilian

Power source
Fuel cell
Hybrid

Commercial

Both

Propeller
Means of
propulsion

Jet-pump
Buoyancy driven

Use of optimizer
Design process

No use of
optimizer

Fig. 2. Classication tree of AUVs.

Ease of Launch
and Recovery

Medium range
(<= 1000 km)
Long range
(> 1000 km)
Hand held
(One or two person
support staff)
Special handling
equipments:
ship, crane

Surface layer
(0-50 m)
Interior layer
(0-300 m)
Bottom layer
(0-6000 m)
Low
(One hour or less)
Medium
(Hours to days)
High
(Weeks to months)

K. Alam et al. / Ocean Engineering 88 (2014) 627630

Scope of Applications

Availabilty

Both
22%

629

Working depth

Cruising range

Unspecified
9%

Military
13%

Surface layer
7%

Interior layer
34%

Academic
research
50%

Commercial
50%

Bottom layer
50%

Unspecified
92%

Civilian
65%

Power source

Torpedo+Wings
Nontorpedo
Torpedo

Shape

Fuel cell
2%
Solar
1%

Torpedo
55%

Hybrid
1%

Endurance/Run-time
Low
1%

Unspecified
2%

Unspecified
32%

Shape

Non-torpedo
40%

Medium
range
1%
Long range
2%

Short range
5%

Medium
59%

1
Torpedo +
wings
5%

Battery
94%

High
8%

0
0

Size
Small
6%

3
4
5
Speed (m/s)

Ease of Launch and Recovery

Large
26%

Unspecified
5%

Hand held
28%

Design process

Means of Propulsion
Jet-pump
1%

Buoyancydriven
6%

Handling
equipment
67%

Use of
Optimizer
0%

No use of
Optimizer
100%

Medium
68%

Propeller
93%

Fig. 3. Classication of different AUVs under development and in use around the world. (a) Availability, (b) scope of applications, (c) shape, (d) range of speed depending of
shapes, (e) size, (f) ease of launch and recovery, (g) working depth, (h) cruising range, (i) power source, (j) endurance/run-time, (k) means of propulsion and (l) design
process.

are less energy efcient with respect to blade propellers and

rudder steering. However, jet-pump design offers several
advantages (Alvarez et al., 2009b) specically for surface layer
AUVs for harbor and coastal oceanographic applications. These
include mechanical design (the absence of rotating parts and
transmission mechanisms), realization cost (simpler ber-glass
cover), robustness with respect to transportation/deployment/
recovery damages (no appendixes protruding from the cylinder), safety of occasional swimmers in proximity of the vehicle
(jet-pumps are much less likely to cause harm at low speed
compared to propeller blades).
Hundreds of different AUVs have been designed over the past
50 or so years (AUVAC, 2012) to meet the challenges of
oceanographic exploration and exploitation programs, but to
the best of our knowledge, no in-depth systematic study has
been done to evaluate optimum design of those AUVs (see
Fig. 3l), or to use any optimization algorithm(s) to nd the
optimum design of an AUV for specic mission requirements.
Traditionally, the AUV design process has been largely ad hoc
with designs governed by experience and rules of thumb
(Martz, 2008) and non-optimal designs are often adopted and
accepted as an option. As the desire/need to minimize the use
of resources (e.g. fuel, building cost, time for design) becomes
increasingly important, optimization approaches become
increasingly popular (Mohamad Ayob et al., 2012). For example,
some works have considered the problem of nding the
optimum hull form for AUVs which include the works of Lutz
and Wagner (1998), Bertram and Alvarez (2006), Alvarez et al.
(2009a), Husaini et al. (2009), Yamaguchi et al. (2002), Joung
et al. (2009), and Martz and Neu (2009) to minimize drag.
Small improvement in drag can result in a substantial saving in
thrust requirement. However, much work still needs to be done

in terms of optimizing the hull form design to minimize drag

and increase propulsion efciency (Joung et al., 2009).

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