Underwater Glider

An underwater glider is a type of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that uses small changes in its buoyancy in conjunction with wings to convert vertical motion to horizontal, and thereby propel itself forward with very low power consumption. While not as fast as conventional AUVs, gliders using buoyancy-based propulsion represent a significant increase in range and duration compared to vehicles propelled by electric motor-driven propellers, extending ocean sampling missions from hours to weeks or months, and to thousands of kilometers of range. Gliders follow an up-and-down, sawtooth-like profile through the water, providing data on temporal and spatial scales unavailable to previous AUVs, and much more costly to sample using traditional shipboard techniques. A wide variety of glider designs are in use by Navy and ocean research organizations and typically cost $100,000 (USD)