AUVs, gliders and floats: three complementary pillars of underwater observation
Observations from the underwater domain

In the underwater domain, the key question is not which platform is best, but how to combine them intelligently. AUVs, gliders and floats are built around very different concepts of time, scale and resolution.

🔹 AUVs – Precision and targeted missions
AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) are designed for complex, localized operations:

High-resolution seabed mapping
Infrastructure inspection
Detailed measurements in constrained environments

They provide high spatial accuracy and rich datasets, but over limited durations.

👉 Their strength: detail and repeatability.

🔹 Gliders – Intelligent endurance
Gliders use buoyancy variations to move through the water with extremely low energy consumption. They enable:

Multi-month missions
Fleet operations over basin-scale or regional areas
A characteristic “yo” motion through the water column, sometimes complemented by horizontal propulsion in hybrid navigation modes

Continuous observations over time

👉 Their strength: long endurance with controlled trajectories, including in coastal environments.

🔹 Floats – Global scale, with coastal limitations
Floats represent today the most widely deployed underwater observation platforms.

Through the Argo Programme, several thousand floats have been deployed since the early 2000s, forming a unique global, autonomous network for monitoring ocean temperature, salinity and vertical structure.

👉 This strength comes with a limitation:
floats do not operate in shallow waters.
Uncontrolled drift, grounding risks and coastal constraints restrict them to the open ocean and deep waters.

👉 Their strength: global coverage and statistics, not local precision.

🌊 The real value: orchestration
Taken individually, each system has limitations.
Combined, they become powerful:

Floats reveal large-scale and long-term trends
Gliders resolve regional and coastal dynamics
AUVs investigate areas of interest in detail

🔍 The future of underwater observation is not a single platform. It is a coordinated system architecture.

 

👉​ Link : https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vidal-teixeira-672a27b2_auv-gliders-floats-activity-7417196310925127680-r3_j?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAADgbq5IBdJEba6NSrWg-B7x4okZyTK9q-DQ