DESIGN OF AUTONOMOUS UNMANNED SYSTEM FOR AERIAL OPERATIONS FROM UNDERWATER PLATFORMS

Surveillance and reconnaissance play a very important role in military and civil aspects. They are the key factors in military tactics and in the event of civilian calamities. In case of naval warfare, the submarines which are operating under deep water are required to carry out open land mass surveillance in an efficient manner without reaching to the water surface nor revealing their presence and position. This research paper proposes the conceptualized design to develop an autonomous unmanned octocopter system which is capable of being launched from an underwater platform such as submarines, with the help of a tethered launching mechanism known as octopod, to carry out surveillance, reconnaissance and payload delivery. In this paper, we present a novel method for development of UAV with special application on aerial survey from underwater platforms. A variety of design options which are investigated from various trade studies to evaluate the performance along with design configuration to satisfy the specific requirements are also presented in this paper.