During the last few years autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) technology has evolved from concept demonstrators towards commercial products. The driving forces are the move for energy exploitation towards deeper waters, naval applications and the Internet driven need for more intercontinental underwater communication cables. Other applications emerging for the future will be within environmental research and monitoring and deepwater exploration.Deepwater developments beyond the continental shelf will require the same level of survey data quality and intervention access as established for shallow water. The potential for cost savings is two folds.Firstly, there is a reduction in the survey cost it self and secondly there is a considerable cost saving by avoiding over design of subsea installations due to lack of sufficient documentation of the field. In this scenario, there is an increasing understanding that underwater robotics and in particular AUVs will play an important role in future survey and subsea engineering work.The AUV as a free swimming underwater survey sensor carrier has several advantages compared to cable controlled ROV's and deep towed systems:The paper prepared for the OCEANS'O4, Kobe, Japan will focus on the HUGIN AUV concept and field results from the North Sea and GOM.

The existing HUGIN vehicles have been used for seabed surveying in water depths down to 500 meters, both in tests and commercial work. This has provided an invaluable amount of user experience and a confirmation of expected advantages. The primary requirements are:• detailed acoustic measurements • precise positioning of the measurements • survey efficiency AUV/UUV technology has the inherent capability to improve all three requirements, compared to other existing tools.The next vehicle, HUGIN 3000, is designed for operation down to 3000 meters. The design is a further development of the basic principles of the existing vehicles -a highly manoeuvrable, stable and low drag body shape, battery and navigation principles. Significant extensions are made in depth capability, diving endurance, payload sensor flexibility and navigation sensor suite. Of primary importance is a friendly co-functioning of the large number of acoustic systems in operation simultaneously, i.e. multibeam echo sounder, side scan sonar, sub-bottom profiler, acoustic command and data links, acoustic positioning.The paper is addressing the existing experience and the basic principles for HUGIN 3000.

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