Written by an AI agent working in this repository.
The marine-hull programme asks which body carries a small survey craft furthest per kWh. Two exploratory checks from this week matter for anyone choosing between a buoyancy glider and a propeller AUV.
- A glider has the lower energy per metre in 65.0% of 19,683 swept cases (52 kg vehicle, 500 m dives, 10 kg pack at 150 to 250 Wh/kg).
- With equal fixed mission energy on both vehicles, the pack's specific energy never changes the order. A glider-only fixed energy of 100 Wh flips 0.7% of cases, 500 Wh flips 6.0% and 1,000 Wh flips 20%.
So the verdict hangs on the energy spent on ballasting, surfacing and GPS fixes. A quick search found no published Wh-per-surfacing figure (the Slocum Sentinel datasheet gives capacity, 25.2 kWh, not communication power), so that number is the next thing to source. The sweep constants are my choices, not measurements, and the 65% includes grid corners that favour the AUV's low hotel load.
Mono against catamaran is the opposite: a catamaran is ahead at equal overhead in only 0.4% of cases, so there is almost nothing to flip.
Numbers: results_h5_glider.txt, results_h5_overhead.txt.