India’s seabed is no longer an empty blue void. It is a crowded, contested zone of pipelines, seabed cables, naval mines, lurking submarines and critical coastal infrastructure. Securing this underwater battlespace is no longer a job that divers and manned ships can handle alone. Around the world, the answer has been clear: unleash a new generation of unmanned maritime systems (UMS) — underwater drones, autonomous vehicles and hybrid human–machine teams.
The United States is developing the Orca XLUUV, an extra-large unmanned submarine designed to operate autonomously for months. The UK and Japan are investing heavily in fleets of UUVs and USVs for mine-hunting, anti-submarine warfare and seabed surveillance. India, too, is entering this race — but with an important twist. Instead of simply importing this critical technology, a homegrown startup from Kochi is helping build an indigenous underwater robotics ecosystem.
Welcome to India’s underwater robotics revolution, where EyeROV sits at the sharp end of Aatmanirbhar maritime defence.
From Kochi Lab to National Asset
In 2018, EyeROV’s founders — IIT alumni incubated at Maker Village in Kochi — handed over EyeROV TUNA, India’s first commercial underwater robotic drone, to DRDO’s Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL). TUNA is a compact remotely operated vehicle (ROV) designed to send real-time video from under the waterline: inspecting ship hulls, bridge foundations, dams, ports and underwater structures that are otherwise difficult, slow or dangerous for human divers to reach.
This milestone was more than a tech demo. It signalled three deeper shifts:
- Indigenous IP – A high-end underwater robot, designed and built in India, at par with global inspection-class ROVs.
- Civil–military fusion – A platform equally at home in naval labs, ports, oil & gas, hydropower and research institutions.
- Startup–defence partnership – DRDO choosing a startup partner for a critical underwater capability, rather than relying solely on foreign OEMs.
EyeROV TUNA showed that India did not have to be a passive buyer in the UMS revolution. It could build.
TROUT and the ₹47-Crore Signal from the Indian Navy
If TUNA was the proof of concept, EyeROV TROUT is the declaration of intent. In 2025, EyeROV secured a landmark ₹47-crore contract from the Indian Navy to supply advanced Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles (UWROVs).
Open reports describe TROUT as a military-grade ROV, under 40 kg, with multiple thrusters for six-degree manoeuvrability and the ability to dive beyond 300–400 metres for deep-sea missions. These UWROVs will enhance the Navy’s ability to:
- Inspect hulls, underwater fittings and harbour structures without deploying divers
- Conduct underwater surveillance and reconnaissance in ports and anchorages
- Support mine-countermeasure and explosive ordnance disposal tasks
- Assess damage after accidents or attacks below the waterline
For a startup barely a decade old, this is a huge leap. For India, it is a strategic marker: the Navy is ready to trust indigenous underwater robotics at operational scale.
ROVs, AUVs and Hybrids: Building an Indian UMS Stack
So far, EyeROV is best known for its tethered ROVs. But its portfolio — and India’s broader underwater roadmap — clearly points towards a full UMS stack:
- ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) like TUNA and TROUT provide real-time, operator-controlled “eyes and hands” underwater.
- AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles), driven by DRDO’s Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL), are being designed for long-endurance missions. The High Endurance AUV (HEAUV) under development with Cochin Shipyard can operate for up to 15 days, dive to 300 metres and carry modular payloads for ISR and mine-countermeasure operations.
- Man-portable AUVs from NSTL provide smaller, autonomous platforms for mine-hunting and coastal defence.
- USVs / surface drones and data platforms – EyeROV and others also work on unmanned surface craft and AI-powered analytics that turn raw video and sonar data into actionable insights for operators.
Put together, these create a hybrid model similar in spirit to what the US, UK and Japan are building: combinations of ROVs, AUVs and unmanned surface vessels, linked by robust communications and data pipelines.
The difference is that India’s ecosystem is being stitched together indigenously — DRDO labs, state-backed incubators and startups like EyeROV co-creating a sovereign technology base rather than assembling foreign black boxes.
Why Underwater Robotics Is Central to Aatmanirbhar Maritime Defence
Aatmanirbhar Bharat in defence is often visualised as aircraft, submarines or missile systems. Underwater robotics rarely makes the headlines. Yet it may be one of the most strategically sensitive domains for self-reliance.
- Seabed Infrastructure Is the New Target
Power interconnectors, gas pipelines and fibre-optic cables that carry global internet traffic run along the seabed. Recent incidents affecting pipelines and cables in European waters have underscored how easily they can be sabotaged. If India depends on foreign UMS for inspection and protection of these assets, it hands other nations a permanent technological lever over its economic lifelines.
2. Submarine and Mine Warfare Are Going Robotic
Advanced navies are shifting towards UUVs and mine-countermeasure drones for dangerous jobs once done by manned minehunters and divers. The US Navy’s Orca XLUUV is specifically built for “previously unattainable missions” over months at sea. India cannot afford to stay stuck in a purely manned mindset while potential adversaries deploy swarms of autonomous systems in the same waters.
3. Data Sovereignty and Operational Secrecy
Underwater mapping, sonar signatures, cable layouts and minefield charts are not just “technical data”; they are critical secrets. Using imported drones that rely on foreign software stacks, cloud services or encrypted links risks exposing this information. Indigenous ROVs and AUVs built by Indian teams, on Indian servers, significantly reduce that vulnerability.
In all three areas, EyeROV’s work directly advances Aatmanirbhar goals: Indian IP, Indian production, and Indian control of the data generated under our own seas.
Learning from US, UK and Japan – on Indian Terms
The US model emphasises a family of systems ranging from small UUVs to the Orca XLUUV, designed to operate for months and carry diverse payloads. The UK is experimenting with contractor-operated fleets of UUVs and USVs for anti-submarine and mine-warfare roles. Japan is investing in long-endurance underwater drones and mine-hunting UUVs to monitor increasingly tense regional waters.
India is unlikely to mirror those models exactly — our coastline, threat matrix and resource constraints are different — but the direction of travel is the same:
- Use unmanned systems to extend the reach and persistence of limited manned assets.
- Free up divers and warships from routine inspection or high-risk, low-prestige tasks.
- Build dense surveillance around focal points: naval bases, harbour approaches, anchorages, chokepoints and critical infrastructure.
EyeROV’s ROVs are already doing today, in our ports and hydropower dams, what US and Japanese drones do in their home waters: fast, repeatable underwater inspection with high-resolution imaging. As NSTL’s AUVs mature into fleet service, India will be able to link EyeROV-style inspection-class vehicles with larger autonomous platforms — creating an Indian UMS ecosystem that is interoperable, modular and exportable.
Civil–Military Flywheel: How Commercial Work Strengthens Defence
One of EyeROV’s under-appreciated strengths is that it is not a single-client defence vendor. Its ROVs already operate across ports, oil & gas platforms, dams and tunnels, logging thousands of hours of inspection time.
This matters for three reasons:
- Reliability under Real Conditions Every inspection in a murky dam or silt-choked port refines the hardware, software and operator training. Naval deployments then benefit from a product that has seen far more field time than a bespoke “defence only” design.
2. Cost and Scalability Civilian demand allows EyeROV to produce at scale, lowering per-unit cost for the Navy and making spares, upgrades and training more accessible.
3. Export Potential Countries across the Global South face similar inspection and coastal security needs. An Indian UMS stack that works in our ports and power plants can be exported along with training and support, aligning foreign policy and defence cooperation with commercial opportunity.
This civil–military flywheel is exactly what Aatmanirbhar Bharat needs: dual-use tech that is globally competitive.
What Next: From Pilot Contracts to Doctrinal Core
The ₹47-crore order to EyeROV is a powerful vote of confidence, but it should be treated as the start of a longer journey, not a one-off headline. For India to truly harness its indigenous underwater robotics revolution, three steps are crucial:
- Doctrine and Training: ROVs and AUVs must be embedded into standard naval operations — harbour defence, ship maintenance, exercises, mine-countermeasures — so that using a TUNA or TROUT becomes as routine as launching a RHIB.
- Programmatic Roadmaps: Multi-year acquisition and upgrade plans for unmanned maritime systems will give startups and DRDO labs the confidence to invest in new variants, AI capabilities and modular payloads.
- Regional Partnerships: India can bundle EyeROV-class systems with coastal security and port modernisation packages for friendly countries in the Indian Ocean Region, deepening maritime partnerships while creating markets for indigenous tech.
Conclusion: Taking Ownership of the Underwater Future
In the old imagination of sea power, strength was counted in tonnage, displacement and the number of major combatants. In the emerging reality, it will also be measured by how much of the ocean you can continuously see, sense and shape — quietly, cheaply, and without risking human lives.
EyeROV’s journey from a Maker Village prototype to a Navy-wide UWROV supplier captures this transition in miniature. It is not just a startup success story; it is a blueprint for how Indian deep tech can anchor Aatmanirbhar maritime defence. With DRDO’s long-endurance AUVs, man-portable mine-hunting vehicles and an expanding ecosystem of dual-use underwater robotics, India is no longer a spectator to the global UMS race.
The question now is not whether we can build such systems — EyeROV has already proved that. The question is whether we will scale, integrate and export them with the same seriousness that other nations reserve for submarines and fighter jets.
If we do, the next decade could see Indian-designed robots quietly patrolling not just our own harbours, but also the ports of our partners from Africa to Southeast Asia — silent sentinels of an underwater future that India helped invent and fully owns.
