Technology and Applications of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Documenting the transition of AUVs from dream to reality, this book explores their diverse usage in modern marine environments including scientific research, defence, surveying, and industry.

The oceans are a hostile environment, and gathering information on deep-sea life and the seabed is incredibly difficult. Autonomous underwater vehicles are robot submarines that are revolutionizing the way in which researchers and industry obtain data. Advances in technology have resulted in capable vehicles that have made new discoveries on how the oceans work, and have dramatically reduced the cost to industry of surveying the seabed. Technology and Applications of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles describes the technologies that have made this happen, as well as a host of applications from fish abundance studies to finding diamonds beneath the sea. There is tremendous scope for further innovation beyond the topics discussed, and this book will help the next generation of engineers and scientists in academia, industry and government laboratories, to deliver those advances.