Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

Various UUV and other underwater technology.

Unmanned underwater vehicles, UUVs, mostly go unnoticed compared to most other unmanned vehicles. This is likely because these vehicles are underwater and not often seen in the world. UUV have many potential applications similarly to UAS.

UUV are used for military and research purposes. Military uses for UUV include defense, data collection, ocean mapping, and even mine sweeping. These vehicles detect mines by using sonar. this is also how they can map out their surroundings.

UUV split into two categories: autonomous underwater vehicles and remote operated vehicles. The autonomous ones are typically used for data collection. Using unmanned vehicles to spy on other countries works surprisingly well in the sense that countries don't get that mad when they recover unmanned vehicles. In the future UUV will likely get more of a following as technology improves.

This is an autonomous underwater vehicle. These are used by researchers as well as the military. They can be launched and then later recovered at a predetermined location.

The way UUVs are being used now is sort of similar to the origins of UAS. Both were used early on for simple tasks, but as designers get more ambitious UUV may catch up to UAS. One interesting thing that Lockheed Martin did was successfully launch a UAV from a AUV.

Unmanned underwater vehicles are not only used for military purposes. They can be used for scientific data collection, underwater pipeline inspections, and even polar ice research. The UUVs that are used for these jobs are most likely remote operated vehicles. In order to be remote operated, these vehicles have to be tethered to the controller. Currently there is no way to have wireless remote control of UUVs.

This is an H2000 made by ECA Group. It is an ROV, the tether is attached to the top of it. This model has small arms that can interact with things around it and pick stuff up.

If underwater vehicles can get to a point where they can be remote controlled without a tether, they would be much more useful in data collection and just learning more about the underwater side of Earth.