The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. CitationReed Vertical Glider Robots for Subsea Equipment DeliveryBrooks Reed, Charles Ambler, Julio Guerrero and Franz Hover Abstract-We have developed an underwater vehicle that offers significant performance improvements over existing subsea elevators. Our Vertical Glider Robot falls under its own weight to a precise location on the seafloor, employing streamlining, active steering, and basic navigation instrumentation. We examine typical at-sea mission requirements, mention several key governing parameters, and outline our design approach. We then describe a prototype device, and present results from model-scale experiments.