Review of the existing solutions for AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) docking stations and study of its applicability in the OBSEA (Expandable Seafloor Observatory) for the recharge and data download of the Guanay II AUV developed by the SARTI research group. The project will develop the position control system, for AUV approaching to the docking; acoustic beacon, USBL location system and artificial vision system for relative location of the AUV in respect to the docking; latching mechanism to engage the AUV to the docking; power and data interface systems to recharge batteries and data download; and Lunch and Recovery (LAR) system to deploy and recover the docking and AUV from a support vessel
Cervera et al. (2012) studied this question.