The invention provides an audio-visual detection system and method of a robot under whole-sea deep water. The audio-visual detection system comprises a buoy, underwater sound communication sonar, a compressive cabin, alighting lamp, a camera, a microphone, an altimeter, an audio-visual data acquisition module, an image compression processing module and a main control module. The compressive cabininputs electrical signals to the lighting lamp, the camera and the microphone through watertight wires, and the camera and the microphone transmit video image signals and sound signals back to the audio-visual data acquisition module. The image compression processing module is in TCP/IP full-duplex communication with the main control module, the main control module is in serial communication withthe underwater sound communication sonar, the underwater sound communication sonar is in semi-duplex underwater sound communication with the buoy, and the buoy is in radio communication with a mothership. According to the audio-visual detection system and method of the robot under the whole-sea deep water, the underwater robot is enabled to collect image, video and audio information from shallowsea to a depth of 11,000m, an improved wavelet transform image compression algorithm is used for compressing an image, and the image is transmitted to the buoy by underwater sound communication and transmitted to the mother ship by radio.