Education

Call for Papers, MIC 6th Special Issue on Offshore Mechatronics (new deadline)

By Asle Pedersen

The journal MIC will organise the 6th special edition on offshore technology within the fields of Modeling, Identification and Control.

The fields of primary emphasis by MIC are:
• Modeling: General methodology of modeling including choice of structure, model reduction, numerical aspects, systems for computer aided modeling, etc.
• Identification: General methodology including system structure, identifiability, convergence, numerical aspects, systems for computer aided identification, etc.
• Control: General methodology including system specification, derivation of control strategies, analysis of system properties such as stability, sensitivity, etc.
• Applications: Demonstration, by simulations or experiments, of applications of theory within the above fields to engineering, biological, economic, ecological, social, geophysical, agricultural systems and others.

All papers published in MIC are peer-reviewed. All papers will receive a permanent DOI number and a printed edition will be handed out at the conference. MIC counts as publication level 1 in Norway.

Guest editors in this edition are Daniel Hagen (former PhD fellow in SFI Offshore Mechatronics) and Asle Pedersen (SFI Offshore Mechatronics).

Submit papers to: asle.pedersen@uia.no, daniel.hagen@uia.no with a cc to: editor@mic-journal.no. If you intend to submit, please let us know as soon as possible with a short description of the topic. This will be helpful in the planning of the review process. The submission deadline is August 31, 2023. Manuscripts must be prepared using the MIC template available at https://www.mic-journal.no/for-authors/

PhD Defense at UiA on September 2nd

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Daniel Hagen defends his PhD thesis on Wednesday September 2nd, see https://www.uia.no/arrangementer/disputas-daniel-hagen-om-forbedring-av-energieffektivitet-og-bevegelseskontroll-i-lastbaerende-applikasjoner

The title of the thesis is “Improving Energy Efficiency and Motion Control in Load-Carrying Applications using Self-Contained Cylinders” and this is the 8th PhD defense in the centre SFI Offshore Mechatronics. It is possible for the public to listen in on the PhD defense, see the link above.

PhD Defense at NTNU on August 11

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Geir Ole Tysse defended his PhD thesis at NTNU on August 11, 2020. The opponents were Professor Oliver Sawodny from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and Professor Jing Zhou from the University of Agder. The title of the thesis was “Modeling and Control of Ship-mounted Cranes”.

The trial lecture was on the topic of “control of robots with arm elasticities” and parts of the assessment were: “The candidate gave a very good overview over the state-of-the-art methods of control of robots with arm elasticities. He focused on methods mainly related to differential geometry. He gave good explanations of the main approaches and gave a very good overview over the theoretical and mathematical methods”.

The candidate made important achievements in modelling of ship cranes and load dynamics, in combination with wave excitation. He made important contributions in controlling the crane payload. As part of achieving this, he developed new methods to estimate the effective cable length. He developed a new method of combining MPC approach to the position in outer loop with a Lyapunov-based oscillation damping controller in the inner loop. He showed the efficiency of this approach in several experiments at a test bed developed at NTNU, as well as in simulations.

The entire PhD thesis is made available in ProjectPlace (WP0 – Publications – PhD Theses) for partners in the centre.

PhD Defence

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Sondre Sanden Tørdal successfully defended his PhD thesis on March 19, 2019. The title of the thesis was: “Real-Time Motion Compensation in Ship-to-Ship Load Handling”. The title of the trial lecture was “Towards fully autonomous off-shore operation – Challenges and opportunities?” This PhD defence was the first in the research centre SFI Offshore Mechatronics and many more will follow in 2019 and 2020.


From left: Professor Jan Tommy Gravdahl (Opponent from Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU), Dr. Sondre Sanden Tørdal and Professor Svante Gunnarsson (Opponent from Division of Automatic Control, Department of Electrial Engineering, Linköping University).

BSc and MSc Mechatronics Projects

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phd

A special thank you to all external companies which submitted BSc and MSc Mechatronics thesis proposals at UiA for the spring semester 2017. The SFI Partners submitted in total 15 project proposals distributed as follows: ABB (6), MacGregor (4), Teknova (3), NOV (1) and MHWirth (1). The projects will be assigned students and supervisors by November 14 and after that they can start. Submission of final reports will be in May 2017.

KKG visited the Motion-Lab for the Third Time

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A class of 20 students and the teacher from Kristiansand Katedralskole Gimle (KKG) visited the Motion-Lab and SFI Offshore Mechatronics for the third time. The students completed a PC-based laboratory exercise using a UR5 robot. Maybe some of these students will become researchers in the SFI one day …

In addition, PhD candidate Sondre Sanden Tørdal presented some of his results in WP2.5 Real-Time Multiple DOF Motion Compensation using an Industrial Robot, Sensor Fusion and Conformal Geometric Algebra.