AUV Ship Electrification Patents: Who Leads, Filing Trends 2026
- Filing is accelerating after a flat middle year, with the 2022 midpoint at zero filings before momentum resumed and peaked at 5 families in 2024.
- India leads receiving offices with 9 filings, ahead of PCT (5) and the United States (3) — an unusual geographic center of gravity for this field.
- Naval-vessel claims dominate the IPC mix, with B63G present in all 21 families while battery-specific H01M claims appear in only 4.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks published patent families at the intersection of autonomous and unmanned underwater vehicles and their electrification — battery systems, underwater energy storage, electric underwater propulsion and power management — restricted to naval-vessel, electric-vehicle-propulsion and battery IPC classes. The corpus is small and recent: 21 published families spanning 2015 to a partial 2026, which makes it a field still being defined rather than one with settled claim boundaries.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 count is understated in this dataset and should be read as a floor, not a ceiling. Family-level counting is used throughout so that multi-jurisdiction filing by the same applicant does not inflate any single year or assignee.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 21-family corpus: the year-by-year filing count, and the distribution of records across IPC subclasses. Read together, they show a field where the vehicle-and-hull claims (B63G) are near-universal but electrification-specific subclasses remain thin.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings moved from 2 in 2017 to a trough of 0 at the 2022 midpoint, then recovered to a peak of 5 in 2024 and stand at 4 in the partial 2026 window — a pattern consistent with a technology re-entering active development after a quiet stretch rather than one in steady decline.
IPC subclass distribution
B63G (naval vessels) appears in all 21 families, confirming the search scope; B60L, B63B and G05D each sit at 5 records, and H01M (battery cells) — the subclass most directly tied to electrification hardware — appears in only 4, with B63C and E02B trailing at 2 apiece.
Shares are the percentage of the 21 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Ship Electrification with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about autonomous underwater vehicle ship electrification and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art
Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (US20120289103A1)
A hybrid unmanned underwater vehicle with a vector thruster, deployable wings for gliding ascent and descent, a center-of-mass shifter for pitch control, and a buoyancy control system combining an internal multi-stage mechanism with an expandable outer shell to adjust apparent displacement.Filed by Kongsberg Underwater Technology; the corpus's most-cited record at 125 citations, over four times the second-ranked filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20120289103A1 | Unmanned Underwater Vehicle | 125 |
| 2 | WO2003059734A1 | Construction of an underwater vehicle | 63 |
| 3 | US20180162504A1 | System and Method For Using A Combination Of Multiple Autonomous Vehicles With Different Abilities, Working T… | 15 |
| 4 | GB2543764A | Bed level maintenance in sediment-floored water areas using autonomous underwater vehicle technology | 14 |
| 5 | CN109765917A | 一种基于树莓派的小型自主式水下潜航器 | 8 |
| 6 | WO2018112045A1 | System and method for using a combination of multiple autonomous vehicles with different abilities, working t… | 6 |
| 7 | US20250058638A1 | Hydrogen fuel cell powered autonomous underwater vehicle | 1 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not of current competitive activity.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (7 of 7 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are set against the IPC composition and the citation table.
Recovery, not maturity
The zero-filing midpoint in 2022 followed by a rebound to 5 families in 2024 signals a technology that stalled and restarted rather than one in steady growth. A 21-family corpus this size means each new filing meaningfully shifts the competitive map.
Hull and vehicle claims are the anchor
Every family in this set carries a B63G naval-vessel classification, while H01M battery-specific claims appear in only 4. The vehicle architecture is the shared claim territory; the electrification hardware itself is comparatively open.
India is the largest single filing venue
India's 9 filings outnumber the PCT route (5) and the United States (3) combined with Australia, China and the EPO. Any freedom-to-operate check for this space needs an India-specific search, not just a PCT or US-centric one.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to autonomous underwater vehicle ship electrification, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The assignee set is a long tail: academic institutions and small technical teams account for most recent-year activity, with no single organisation filing at volume. Co-assignee pairs are rare and mostly reflect academic-industry or two-inventor collaborations rather than corporate alliances.
JIS College of Engineering
The most active filer in the most recent year, working alongside its AICTE IDEA LAB unit as a co-assignee pair — a pattern typical of an academic lab building out a filing program rather than a commercial entrant scaling production.
Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology
A single recent filing places this institute among the active names, consistent with the broader India-weighted geography seen in the receiving-office data.
Kongsberg Underwater Technology
Holds the corpus's most-cited record, the hybrid glider-and-buoyancy design from 2012, but shows no recent-year filing momentum in this dataset — its influence is historical rather than current.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| JIS COLLEGE OF ENG | 2 | — |
| THAPAR INST OF ENG & TECH | 1 | — |
| CELLULA ROBOTICS LTD | 0 | — |
| International Ocean Engineering Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hangzhou Dianzi University | 0 | — |
| National Industrial Services Training Center | 0 | -100% |
| Impasbo Metals Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| VAIBHAV LAXMAN DHASAL (DIRECTOR) | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The filing trend and IPC composition point to specific next steps for teams deciding where to file or partner.
Run a claim-level check against B63C and H01M
With only 2 and 4 records respectively, these subclasses cover launching/salvaging and battery-cell claims that sit adjacent to the dense B63G territory — a narrower search here can surface specific open claim language.
Explore this in EurekaTrack India and PCT filings separately
India's 9 filings and the 5 PCT filings are the two largest venues; a combined watch on both routes will catch new entrants before they reach US or EPO prosecution.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
This landscape identifies 21 published patent families filed between 2015 and a partial 2026 window, restricted to naval-vessel, electric-propulsion and battery IPC classes combined with AUV-specific search terms. That is a small, still-forming corpus rather than a mature field, so individual filings carry more weight than they would in a larger technology area. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the true 2025-2026 count is almost certainly higher than currently visible.
Recent-year activity is led by academic and technical-institute filers such as JIS College of Engineering, which filed 2 families in the latest year alongside its AICTE IDEA LAB co-assignee, and Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology with 1. Older, highly-cited art such as Kongsberg Underwater Technology's hybrid vehicle design shows no recent filing momentum, meaning historical influence and current activity point to different organisations. There is no single dominant commercial filer in this dataset; it is a long tail of smaller players.
India is the largest single receiving office with 9 filings, ahead of the PCT route at 5 and the United States at 3, with Australia, China and the EPO each holding 1. This is an unusual concentration compared with many marine-technology fields, which tend to skew toward US, European or Japanese filing offices. Anyone running freedom-to-operate work in this space should include an India-specific search rather than relying on PCT or US databases alone.
US20120289103A1, assigned to Kongsberg Underwater Technology, describes a hybrid unmanned underwater vehicle combining a vector thruster, deployable gliding wings, a center-of-mass shifter for pitch control, and a dual buoyancy-control approach using both an internal multi-stage mechanism and an expandable outer shell. It is the most-cited record in this corpus at 125 citations, more than four times the next-most-cited filing, which signals it is a foundational reference point for hybrid glider-and-thruster AUV architecture. Anyone designing a similar hybrid buoyancy or pitch-control mechanism should review its claims closely before finalising a design.
The IPC composition shows B63G (naval vessels) present in all 21 families, while H01M (battery cells) appears in only 4 and B63C (launching and salvaging) in just 2 — meaning the vehicle-hull architecture is densely claimed while the electrification hardware itself, such as modular battery packs, underwater wireless charging for docking, and pressure-tolerant housing, is comparatively open. E02B (waterway engineering) is similarly thin at 2 records. These lower-count subclasses are reasonable starting points for a novelty search before committing to a specific claim strategy.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.