This landscape tracks 28 published patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine AUV or unmanned underwater vehicle claims with hull-specific engineering language such as pressure hull design, hydrodynamic shaping, buoyancy control structures or streamlined body claims. That is a small, tightly scoped field compared with AUV electronics or sonar patenting. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true count for 2024–2026 filings is likely higher than currently visible.

No single company holds a dominant position; the set includes filers such as Autonomous Robotics, Seabed Geosolutions BV, American Systems Corp, PXGEO UK and Indian Institute of Information Technology, among others. The most-cited hull concepts, however, come from filings titled "Seismic autonomous underwater vehicle," which suggests survey-AUV specialists have had outsized influence on later filers. Recent-year filing activity is thin across almost every assignee, with JIS College of Engineering the only one showing a filing in the latest tracked year.

The data points to a slowdown rather than growth: filings peaked at 6 in 2017 and had fallen to 1 by the 2022 midpoint, with a flat-to-declining trend through 2026. This does not necessarily mean R&D interest has disappeared — it may reflect consolidation around a few proven hull geometries, or a shift of engineering effort toward control, sensing and AI systems rather than the physical hull itself. The most recent one to two years should be read cautiously given normal publication lag.

US20200070942A1, assigned to Autonomous Robotics Limited and titled "Autonomous Underwater Vehicle," claims a seabed-sensing AUV designed to ground itself in a stationary condition on the seabed, built around a body with a multiplane wing configuration — described in the filing as potentially a box wing. It is one of the more structurally distinctive hull claims in this dataset because it ties buoyancy and stability directly to a specific wing geometry rather than a conventional torpedo-style hull. Anyone designing a seabed-grounding AUV hull should review its claim scope directly before finalizing a wing or fin layout.

Based on IPC composition and claim density, under-claimed areas include multiplane or box-wing buoyancy structures, seabed-grounding stabilization mechanisms, modular launch-and-retrieval hull interfaces, and hull designs that integrate AI-assisted form control or non-seismic sensing payloads. The core streamlined-body and pressure-hull claim space is comparatively dense, especially where it overlaps with seismic-survey AUV filings. A narrower first claim tied to one of these specific sub-mechanisms, rather than a general hull shape, is more likely to clear existing art.