About

The Norwegian Motion Laboratory (Motion Lab) is a national research infrastructure located at the University of Agder (UiA) campus Grimstad. The laboratory was established in 2013 with funding from the Norwegian Center for Offshore Wind Energy (NORCOWE), together with additional funding from UiA and the Research Council of Norway (National Financing Initiative for Research Infrastructure).

Students, researchers, and external partners can book Motion Lab to perform tests and measurements.

Research Infrastructure

The available setup and equipment enable the laboratory to function as a unique testing facility to develop, improve, and validate offshore motion compensation methods and other motion-related tasks in general.

In addition to the main equipment depicted below, the laboratory is equipped with several sensors and tracking equipment allowing a complete measurement coverage of the motion systems involved.

An additional E-Motion 1500 Mobile Stewart platform, portable on a car trailer, is accessible for use in all of Norway. Go to Equipment page for more information about the available equipment.

Use Cases

Since the opening, Motion Lab has provided critical infrastructure in several research projects and numerous projects have been and continue to be carried out with external industry partners.

Examples of experiments which are possible to conduct with the facility are:

  • Heave-compensated crane solutions for transfer of personnel/loads (fixed-to-floater and floater-to-floated).
  • Heave-compensated drilling systems (including force control in wire fixed to ground).
  • Accuracy performance evaluation of measurement systems (LiDAR, MRUs, etc.).
  • Dynamic drop tests, for example scaled-down lifeboats.
  • Playback of 6-dof motion time series, for examples wave-induced vessel motions.

Ship-to-Ship Motion Compensation

During the SFI Offshore Mechatronics project (2015-2019), PhD candidate Sondre Tørdal was researching a new system of assistance that crane operators can use when loading containers between ships in high wave conditions offshore. A video demonstrating the results can be seen below.

Motion-Compensated Pile Gripper

Between 2020 and 2023, Motion Lab has been used to catalyze proof-of-concept testing of MacGregor’s motion-compensated pile gripper concept. A complex offshore mechatronics system that will be used to install monopiles for fixed offshore wind turbines. Read this post for more information and video demonstration.