Preliminary Exterior Design and Hydrodynamic Evaluation of a Small-Scale Underwater Glider

Abstract

Autonomous underwater gliders (AUGs) use complex control algorithms to navigate that balance power consumption and adherence to mission parameters. Testing of these algorithms on large scale gliders, such as Deepglider and Seaglider, requires deployments that can be labor and time intensive. We examine the feasibility of using a small-scale glider as a test platform to replicate flight dynamics of traditional gliders. In particular, in this paper, we are demonstrating the experimental determination of the coefficients of lift and drag as parameters in the glider's hydrodynamic model using three different regression methods.