Marine / Underwater
2 robots · scored byMARMX
Autonomous underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and uncrewed surface vessels.
Underwater Robots in 2026: the market at a glance
This page lists 2 underwater robots from 1 company in 1 country, each scored 0–100 on the Marine Metric (MARMX).
All of them are real products. Of the 2 tracked, 2 are shipping to customers (2 commercially available). The difference is scored: commercial readiness is a pillar of the MARMX, and a robot in a demo video does not earn it.
On autonomy, the level each has actually demonstrated rather than claimed: 2 task-autonomous. A robot is graded teleoperated when its public demonstrations are remotely driven, however they are marketed.
How this category is scored
The Marine Metric (MARMX), version
0.2.0. Pillars are weighted for what
actually matters to this class, and normalised against
marine / underwater-specific reference scales.
Not applicable to this category: Ecosystem & Viability. These pillars are excluded from the index and the remaining weights renormalised — not scored zero.
Category profile
Every company in this category is re-checked on the cadence above by the research agents, and every proposed change is reviewed before it reaches this page.
Top marine / underwater robots
Full marine / underwater leaderboard — all 2 with filters →| # | Robot | Company | Status | Autonomy | MARMX |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Surveyor | Saildrone | commercial | task-autonomous | 80.3 |
| 2 | Voyager | Saildrone | commercial | task-autonomous | 57.9 |
Why the MARMX weighs what it weighs
The published reasoning behind every pillar weight in
the Marine Metric, version 0.2.0.
- Mobility (0.30) — endurance and range, weighted far above speed. Drag rises with the square of velocity underwater, so every extra knot is bought from the endurance the mission actually needs.
- Hardware (0.25) — led by depth rating, the one hard physical gate in the class: a 300 m vehicle cannot do a 3000 m job at any price, while most other specs are trades rather than walls.
- Autonomy (0.25) — the sharpest dividing line here. A work-class ROV is teleoperated by definition, flown down an umbilical from a support vessel costing six figures a day. The ladder scoring that at 35 is not a penalty; it is the cost problem the AUV market exists to solve.
- Commercial (0.12) — deliberately light. Offshore contracts are commercially confidential and rarely announced, so an absent deployment list is usually missing evidence rather than an idle machine.
- Manipulation (0.08) — for work-class ROVs with hydraulic manipulators. Survey AUVs carry none and are not marked down for it.
- Ecosystem (0.00) — excluded. Mostly subsidiaries of offshore-services and defence groups where a funding figure means nothing.
Frequently asked questions
How many underwater robots are there in 2026?
This index tracks 2 underwater robots from 1 company, counting only machines documented by at least two independent sources.
How many underwater robots are commercially available?
2 of 2 are shipping to customers — 2 commercially available and 0 in limited production.