ABSTRACT
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have evolved from mainly experimental platforms to increasingly reliable systems used for a variety of scientific, commercial, and military applications. The Slocum glider is a commercially available, buoyancy-driven, battery operated AUV. Instead of using a propeller, a buoyancy-driven vehicle achieves forward propulsion by changing its buoyancy resulting in a sawtooth-shaped flight path. Due to this energy efficient mode of propulsion, gliders are the platform of choice for oceanographic research that needs a continuous sensing presence in the world's oceans, allowing individual AUV deployments lasting several months. Slocum gliders have been used to study the impact of global warming, ocean phenomena such as toxic algae blooms, or environmental disasters such as the oil spill as the result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico

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