Autonomous underwater vehicles

Uncrewed submarines and gliders that navigate without a tether.

China leads autonomous underwater vehicles research, with 71.7% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; the United States is second with 3.7%.

FirstChina71.7%

SecondUnited States3.7%

19.2×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1CNChina71.7%2USUnited States3.7%3GBUnited Kingdom2.4%4–6ITItaly1.7%4–6KRSouth Korea1.6%4–6IRIran1.5%7INIndia1.4%8–13CACanada1.0%8–13JPJapan0.9%8–13DEGermany0.8%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 382 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

About 76 papers a year. Single-year moves are noise.

China

Everyone else, on a larger scale

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Trajectory tracking and motion control	78	CNChina75.7%	GBUnited Kingdom4.0%	FRFrance2.1%
Multi-vehicle formation and cooperative control	62	CNChina81.7%	IRIran5.6%	USUnited States4.3%
Path planning and obstacle avoidance	61	CNChina81.2%	INIndia2.6%	CACanada2.2%
Wireless charging and docking	31	CNChina77.6%	HKHong Kong4.3%	USUnited States3.9%
Navigation and localisation	28	CNChina53.9%	ILIsrael10.7%	USUnited States8.0%
Sensing, perception and inspection missions (sonar, vision)	27	CNChina65.0%	ITItaly8.1%	USUnited States4.1%
Underwater communication networks and data collection	26	CNChina52.4%	USUnited States7.7%	KRSouth Korea7.6%
Hull design, hydrodynamics and underwater gliders	17	CNChina79.4%	GBUnited Kingdom5.9%	TRTurkey5.9%
Bio-inspired underwater robots	15	CNChina69.0%	USUnited States6.7%	KRSouth Korea6.7%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

CNChina 70.9%72.6%+1.8 pts

USUnited States 5.1%2.4%−2.7 pts

GBUnited Kingdom 1.6%3.2%+1.6 pts

ITItaly 1.5%2.0%+0.5 pts

KRSouth Korea 1.7%1.5%−0.2 pts

IRIran 2.3%0.7%−1.6 pts

INIndia 1.5%1.2%−0.3 pts

CACanada 1.5%0.5%−1.0 pts

Greyed rows rest on fewer than five papers of credit in one period.

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 193 papers in 2021–2023, 189 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (904), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

CNChina72.1%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States5.1%of 2026 papers have an author here
INIndia3.9%of 2026 papers have an author here
GBUnited Kingdom3.1%of 2026 papers have an author here
KRSouth Korea2.9%of 2026 papers have an author here

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

CNChina 75.1%66.7%+8.4

Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1CNHarbin Engineering University9.8%
2CNTianjin University3.4%
3CNHuazhong University of Science and Technology3.1%
4CNOcean University of China3.1%
5CNDalian Maritime University3.1%
6CNZhejiang University3.0%
7CNShanghai Jiao Tong University2.9%
8CNHarbin Institute of Technology2.7%
9CNNorthwestern Polytechnical University2.7%
10CNTsinghua University1.9%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	CN	US	GB
Universities	86.1%	88.7%	77.3%	81.9%
Research facilities	9.7%	7.4%	10.9%	15.4%
Government labs	2.6%	3.2%	0%	0%
Other	0.6%	0%	4.5%	0%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

23.8% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

CNUSChina with United States21
CNGBChina with United Kingdom6
CNHKChina with Hong Kong6
CACNCanada with China6
CNKRChina with South Korea5

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

A Survey of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Formation: Performance, Formation Control, and Communication Capability
IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 2021CNUS
467citations
Path planning and obstacle avoidance for AUV: A review
Ocean Engineering, 2021CN
378citations
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle navigation: A review
Ocean Engineering, 2023CN
366citations
Implicit coordination for 3D underwater collective behaviors in a fish-inspired robot swarm
Science Robotics, 2021US
338citations
Path Planning Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Under Ocean Current Disturbance
IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2022CNUS
318citations

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

"autonomous underwater vehicle" OR "unmanned underwater vehicle" OR "underwater glider" OR "underwater robot" OR AUV

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Underwater Vehicles and Communication Systems; Distributed Control Multi-Agent Systems; Biomimetic flight and propulsion mechanisms; Robotic Path Planning Algorithms; Ship Hydrodynamics and Maneuverability; Underwater Acoustics Research; Reinforcement Learning in Robotics; Adaptive Control of Nonlinear Systems; Inertial Sensor and Navigation; Wireless Power Transfer Systems. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 3,789
In the top 10%: 382
In the top 1%: 40
Countries with credit: 44
Credit with no known country: 2.5%

Every one of the 495 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 15 were left out as not about autonomous underwater vehicles

The most cited of those left out:

Review of Autonomous Path Planning Algorithms for Mobile Robots322 citations
A Review of Path-Planning Approaches for Multiple Mobile Robots162 citations
A survey on energy efficiency in underwater wireless communications140 citations
A Survey on Underwater Computer Vision119 citations
Towards the internet of underwater things: a comprehensive survey112 citations
A Survey of Multi-Agent Systems on Distributed Formation Control101 citations
Co-Design of Fault Detection and Consensus Control Protocol for Multi-Agent Systems Under Hidden DoS Attack98 citations
TargetTree-RRT*: Continuous-Curvature Path Planning Algorithm for Autonomous Parking in Complex Environments74 citations
Event-Triggered Adaptive Command Filtered Bipartite Finite-Time Tracking Control of Nonlinear Coopetition MASs With Time-Varying Disturbances55 citations
Long-Range Underwater Acoustic Channel Estimation37 citations
Distributed Output Feedback Prescribed Performance Control for High-Order Nonlinear Multi-Agent Systems30 citations
Multi-Scale Marine Object Detection in Side-Scan Sonar Images Based on BES-YOLO29 citations

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method