The Marine Cybernetics Laboratory is the newest test basin at the Marine Technology Centre. It is located in what was originally a storage tank for ship models made of paraffin wax.
As the name indicates, the facility is especially suited for tests of marine control systems, due to the relatively small size and advanced instrumentation package. It is also suitable for more specialised hydrodynamic tests, mainly due to the advanced towing carriage , which has capability for precise movement of models in 6 degrees of freedom.
The MCLab is operated by the Department of Marine Technology, and has been a Marie Curie EU Training Site since 2002. It is mainly used by Master and PhD-students, but it is also available for MARINTEK and external users.
The software in use was developed using rapid prototyping techniques and automatic code generation under Matlab/Simulink and Opal. The target PC onboard the vessel runs the QNX real-time operating system while experimental results are presented in real-time on a host PC using Labview.
