Underwater vehicles (UVs) not only play an important role in civilian fields, but have also been widely used in military fields and have broad application prospects. However, they are susceptible to the influence of the ocean current environment during underwater navigation, which makes their hydrodynamic parameters uncertain and in turn leads to difficulties in motion attitude control, navigation deviation and increased navigation cost, and even affects the completion of underwater combat tasks and the occurrence of collision accidents, thereby endangering navigation safety. Building on a summary of the current status of hydrodynamic research regarding different UVs in ocean currents and UV control methods for dealing with ocean current interference, we propose several perspectives on the development direction of UVs under ocean currents intended to provide references for the study of the influence mechanisms of complex ocean currents on the hydrodynamic parameters of UVs and the design of controllers.