Sondre Nordås, WP1.2, submitted his PhD thesis on December 15, 2019. The title of the thesis is: Using Digital Hydraulics in Secondary Control of Motor Drive. This is the first PhD thesis completed in work-package 1.
Month: December 2019
New Innovation Projects Funded
On December 16 the Research Council of Norway announced the new projects funded through the “Innovation Projects in Industry” (IPN) program, see: https://www.forskningsradet.no/behandling-av-soknad/gjennomforte-utlysninger/soknadsresultat-ipn-2019
In total 352 applications where received from companies all over Norway before the September 25 application deadline. In total 1,25 billion NOK will be handed out to the highest ranked projects.
Two partner companies in SFI Offshore Mechatronics were successful in this round. The the topics in both projects are directly linked to topics being worked on in the centre. The projects are:
MacGregor Norway AS, Project Number 309895. Increasing Operational Efficiency by Retrofitting Sensor-Based Anti-Swing Technology on Offshore Cranes. Funding received 2,625 MNOK. Researchers in SFI Offshore Mechatronics WP3 Robotics and Autonomy will participate in this project.
National Oilwell Varco Norway AS, Project Number 310050. Next generation fiber rope system product for real-time fiber rope condition monitoring. Funding received 9,0 MNOK.
The IPN scheme requires the companies to contribute 50% of the funding themselves, so the total budgets of these two projects are 23,25 MNOK.
As the centre is now in the second half of it’s funding period, the centre administration of SFI Offshore Mechatronics plans to increase it’s effort towards new spin-off projects and activities. The next funding deadlines in Norway are in May and September 2020.
New Researcher WP3.7
Ronny Landsverk started working on WP3.7 in Q1-2019. The title of his work package is: “Coupled Dynamics between Vessel and Crane”. He has an MSc from UiA within Mechatronics. The main supervisor of this project is Professor Jing Zhou. This work-package was created with additional funding from UiA.
New Researcher WP2.7
Hans Kristian Holen started working on WP2.7 as an integrated PhD in February 2019 and as a full time PhD from June 2019. He has a MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from NTNU, 2019, a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from UiS, 2016 and a year of economic studies at NHH in 2017. The title of his project is: Vision systems for supervision of offshore drilling operations.
New Researcher WP3.6
Dipendra Subedi started as a PhD Research Fellow at University of Agder (UiA, Norway) under WP3.6 on 22 February 2019 with Associate Professor Ilya Tyapin and Geir Hovland as supervisors. Subedi holds a B.E. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Anna University, India) and a Joint Master’s Degree in Advanced Robotics (University of Genoa, Italy and Jaume I University, Spain). He worked as a Robotics Software Engineer at Dorabot Inc., China for 1 year before starting his PhD at UiA.
In the SFI, he is working on Instrumentation and Real-Time Control of Long-Reach Light-Weight Arm for Offshore Use.