Design and Application of Underwater Vehicles

Dear Colleagues,

Underwater vehicles are part of the core technical equipment used for exploring and developing marine resources. Their designs and applications have irreplaceable strategic value in deep sea exploration, environmental monitoring, seabed resource surveying, and military security. With the continuous growth in the global demand for marine resources, underwater vehicles can not only perform high-precision seabed topography mapping and biodiversity surveys and other scientific tasks, but also be applied in the maintenance of seabed infrastructure (such as oil and gas pipelines and optical cable inspection) and marine disaster early warning scenarios, as well as other practical scenarios. Facing complex and changeable marine environments (such as high pressure, strong turbulence, and extreme temperature gradients), the design of underwater vehicles needs to balance energy efficiency and system reliability and use intelligent control algorithms (such as model predictive control and adaptive path planning) to deal with dynamic disturbances, ensuring the stability and safety of task execution. In addition, the autonomous operation ability of underwater vehicles under extreme conditions provides key technical support for advancing marine scientific research and environmental protection.

The research and development of underwater vehicles reflects the achievements of multi-disciplinary integration, covering mechanical structure optimization, intelligent perception system integration, and energy management strategies. Their design needs to address core issues such as multi-degree-of-freedom motion control, improvements in long-endurance capabilities, and the optimization of environmental adaptability, such as by using lightweight materials and modular architectures to reduce energy consumption and also by integrating data-driven real-time decision-making systems to enhance their obstacle avoidance and trajectory-tracking capabilities. High-precision numerical modeling and simulation technologies have further improved their operational accuracy in non-ideal environments, such as complex ocean currents and sensor noise. The combination of distributed sensor networks and artificial intelligence algorithms has also promoted the realization of fully autonomous and intelligent underwater operations. These technological innovations not only accelerate the progress of marine science and engineering, but also lay a solid foundation for future deep sea resource development, ecological protection, and global ocean governance.

Prof. Dr. Zhiguang Feng
Guest Editor

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• underwater vehicles
• artificial intelligence
• autonomous underwater vehicles
• deep sea exploration