We are developing a prototype underwater glider for subsea payload delivery. The idea is to use a glider to deliver payloads for subsea installations. In this type of application, the hydrodynamic forces and dynamic stability of the glider is of particular importance, as it has implications on the glider's endurance and operation. In this work, the effect of two different wing forms, rectangular and tapered, on the hydrodynamic characteristics and dynamic stability of the glider were investigated, to determine the optimal wing form. To determine the hydrodynamic characteristics, tow tank resistance tests were carried out using a model fitted alternately with a rectangular wing and tapered wing. Steady-state CFD analysis was conducted using the hydrodynamic coefficients obtained from the tests, to obtain the lift, drag and hydrodynamic derivatives at different angular velocities. The results show that the rectangular wing provides larger lift forces but with a reduced stability envelope. Conversely, the tapered wing exhibits lower lift force but improved dynamic stability

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly popular for civil applications due to their flight capabilities and mobility. This paper proposes an indoor autonomous patrol and surveillance system using unmanned aerial vehicles. The system consists of six components: (1) a low cost vision-based pose estimation of UAVs, (2) vision-based state estimation, (3) UAV patrol path planning, (4) UAV controller to desired waypoints, (5) manual joystick controller and (6) assignment of priority hierarchy to multiple control inputs of a robot. The components were integrated successfully and the designed system was experimented in an indoor setup. Results has shown that the proposed system is suitable and feasible to be used as an autonomous patrol and surveillance agent for indoors use.

Conventional pipeline corrosion assessment methods result in failure pressure predictions that are conservative, especially for pipelines that are subjected to internal pressure and axial compressive stress. Alternatively, numerical methods may be used. However, they are computationally expensive. This paper proposes an analytical equation based on finite element analysis (FEA) for the failure pressure prediction of a high toughness corroded pipeline with a single corrosion defect subjected to internal pressure and axial compressive stress. The equation was developed based on the weights and biases of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model trained with failure pressure from finite element analysis (FEA) of a high toughness pipeline for various defect depths, defect lengths, and axial compressive stresses. The proposed model was validated against actual burst test results for high toughness materials and was found to be capable of making accurate predictions with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.99. An extensive parametric study using the proposed model was subsequently conducted to determine the effects of defect length, defect depth, and axial compressive stress on the failure pressure of a corroded pipe with a single defect. The application of ANN together with FEA has shown promising results in the development of an empirical solution for the failure pressure prediction of pipes with a single corrosion defect subjected to internal pressure and axial compressive stress.