what is an AUV?

The AUV is the counterpoint to the ROV: where that one carries a human pilot at the end of a cable, the AUV navigates by dead reckoning and sonar, out of contact with the surface, making every decision on board. That is why this category serves as our gold standard when judging any land robot's autonomy: at sea, the difference between teleoperated and autonomous is not decided by marketing but by physics.

Its typical job is the patient sweep: mapping seafloors, inspecting pipelines, hunting wrecks or black boxes by combing an area in lawnmower passes for hours or days. The great wave of ocean mapping to come (less than 30% of the seafloor is charted to modern standards) will largely be AUV work, and who is funding it is told in the story of the billionaire who wants to give away the seafloor.