Research on the Integration of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Digital Twin Technology

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) have become critical instruments in exploring and developing resources within the ocean, but they also pose fundamental problems when being used underwater, including the problem of delays in communication, difficulty in monitoring systems, and the problem of not being seen. This is because Digital Twin technology offers an innovative method of solving the real-time state understanding, smart operation and maintenance, and decision-supporting AUVs by developing the dynamic, interactive virtual embodiments of the physical objects. The paper examines the present-day research on the topic of AUVs and Digital Twin integration. One, it provides the basic principles of the AUV systems and Digital Twin technology, the data flow and integrated system architecture. It then outlines the major enabling technologies of realizing this integration in three dimensions high-fidelity modeling, underwater data interaction and transmission and 3D visualization and human-machine interaction. Lastly, the paper examines the key issues that face the integration, which include bottlenecks in the underwater acoustic communication process, the underwater process of dynamic model calibration, and the constraint of AUV onboard processing power and energy consumed. It also includes a perspective of the direction in the future, including the trend towards lightweight edge computing, cloud-edge cooperation, and predictive health. The study has shown that thorough combination of these two technologies can significantly improve the safety, reliability and intelligence of the operations of the AUVs. Submarine autonomous search systems. It is hoped that in the future, it will be applied in deep-sea scientific research, operation and maintenance of underwater infrastructure, military uses, and the underwater Internet of Things.