Currently, most oceanographic sampling requires costly trips to sea to
collect data sets using a variety of deployable instruments and/ or underwater
vehicles. Where an oceanographer chooses to look for certain hydrographic
features is based on the oceanographer's personal knowledge of the structure
and general location of said features in time and space. This challenges
ocean engineers to develop autonomy
aboard AUVs such that adaptive environmental feature tracking and
detection may occur in the dynamic ocean without an oceanographer's guidance. This
talk presents a number of tools and methods that are currently in use
to begin the development of autonomous quantitative detection and tracking
of hydrographic features onboard AUVs. Results
are presented for a basic thermocline tracking mission that has been
evaluated both in simulation and in the water.