Journey Notes

The work that happens away from the CAD desk: a seminar and delivery-network proposal from a UAV team, a conference paper on an autonomous underwater welding and inspection ROV, and the question of where to cut module boundaries in a codebase that keeps growing.

The UAV article walks through the real cost lines of parcel logistics and a delivery network built on mobile ground control stations. The ROV article summarises a design that puts underwater welding and weld inspection into one vehicle, supported by image processing and machine learning. The modular architecture article argues for cutting boundaries by rate of change rather than by technology, and covers how to version data contracts and what decision records are actually for.

These are project journals rather than tutorials: what was attempted, what did not hold, and what was left standing after the decision. Written for readers who want to see mechanical design, embedded systems and software architecture collide inside one project.

For the same engineering approach in productised form, see the case studies under Projects; for its CAD-side counterpart, see the CAD Automation category.