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Application · Universities, institutes and industrial R&D
Research motion platform, specified so another lab could rebuild it.
In a test the platform is the instrument. In research it is part of the apparatus — the method stays with your lab, and what we owe you is motion that is known, stated and repeatable enough to survive review.
Requirement written in micrometres? That is a different class of machine and we do not build it — the boundary section says where the line falls and what sits on the other side of it.
A platform stops being a product the moment it becomes apparatus. From then on it has to be describable, not just capable.
What actually arrives at the laboratory
The 4-Configuration Research Bench Stack
Research budgets are approved against a described thing, not a product name. These four are how our research work actually divides, and each one is written so it can be lifted into a funding application or a tender without naming us.
R1
Teaching and single-investigator rig
Compact class · 150 – 300 kg on the moving frame
A small platform that a department or a single research group can own outright: put it on a bench, run it from a laptop, hand it to the next cohort.
Inside the supply
- Mechanism, controller, drives and cabinet as one delivered unit
- A documented way to command pose, written for a reader who was not in the meeting
- Loaded acceptance and the identification record
- Documentation written to be read by someone who did not order it
Not included: the experiment fixture, the instrumentation, and any teaching material built around the machine.
R2
Open-interface laboratory platform
Moving load follows whatever the apparatus weighs
The configuration most research groups actually need: the platform is a plant your own code drives, and how far down you can reach is agreed in writing before it is built.
Inside the supply
- The moving machine and everything that drives it
- Command level fixed at the interface review — pose, or leg length, or lower
- State returned to your host, with the coordinate convention and units frozen
- What happens on a late packet, an abort, a reset and a stop — named, not assumed
Not included: your real-time host, your model or control law, and the analysis that follows.
R3
Human-subject platform
Seat, frame and restraint included in the moving load
Where a person is on the platform, the machine stops being only a motion source. Access, restraint, stopping behaviour and the envelope the protocol is allowed to command all become design inputs.
Inside the supply
- Platform with a mechanically limited envelope agreed for the protocol
- Hard-wired stop circuit brought to positions your ethics submission names
- Defined behaviour on stop: how it comes to rest, and where
- Boarding position and access arrangement designed with your rig
Not included: the ethics submission, participant screening, the seat and harness themselves, and the medical judgement behind any of it.
R4
Large or environment-constrained apparatus
Beyond 2,000 kg, or an envelope the building already decided
Beside a basin, inside an existing hall, under a gantry: the envelope is set by a building or an experiment that already exists, and the mechanism is drawn around it.
Inside the supply
- A hexagon drawn around your apparatus rather than picked from a range
- Structural check run against the apparatus you are actually mounting
- Environmental specification stated explicitly — humidity, splash, temperature
- Delivered, installed and accepted in the room it will live in
Not included: anything the building owns — foundations, structural works, permits, and the institution’s safety approval for the installed cell.
R2 is where most research enquiries end up, and it is also the one most often under-specified — because “open interface” means four different things to four different groups. The openness section makes it a choice with three named levels rather than an adjective.
Writing a grant application that has to describe the equipment? Ask for the configuration written as a specification you can tender →
Which mechanism carries the apparatus
The platforms these benches are built on
In research the axis count is not a performance choice, it is a methodological one. Every axis you can command is a variable you can control; every axis you cannot is a variable you have to argue about later.
Three axes
3DOF motion platform
A serial mechanism giving heave, roll and pitch. Where a study lives in one plane, the axes you cannot command are variables you would otherwise have to argue away in a discussion section.
Six axes
6DOF motion platform
A parallel mechanism where all six move together. Necessary when the coupling itself is what you are studying, or when a participant has to experience one stimulus rather than six superimposed ones.
Hexapod geometry
Stewart platform
Six legs specified around holding rather than travelling. Chosen where an instrument has to sit at a stated attitude and return to it, or where the pivot belongs somewhere other than the table.
The Axis-Count Read from the Research Question Start from what has to be controlled, not from what is available
| What the study needs to control | What to specify | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One plane — heave, roll and pitch carry the variable, the rest is not part of the question | 3DOF | Three axes you can state and defend in a paper beat six you cannot characterise |
| Coupling itself, or a full-pose stimulus a participant experiences as one thing | 6DOF | Reproducing three of six changes the stimulus, not only its realism |
| Holding a pose and stepping between poses, rather than following a trajectory | Stewart | The figure that matters becomes repeatability at a pose, not travel |
| One axis with far more travel than the others | Serial axis + platform | Stretching a parallel mechanism for one long stroke costs every other axis |
The trade-off is worked through on 3DOF vs 6DOF; electric vs hydraulic covers why every laboratory platform on this page is servo electric — in a room with people and instruments, fluid and noise are experimental variables nobody asked for.
Know what the study varies but not how many axes it takes? Send the protocol draft and we will work the axis count out of it →
Delivered research platforms
Three laboratories, and what actually governed each design
Institutions stay unnamed. What travels is the setting, the scale, the job the platform was doing and the one requirement that ended up dictating the build. None of the three was decided by how much it had to carry.
University human-factors laboratory
The envelope was set by the ethics submission
A perception study needed a stimulus set that a review board had already approved, which meant the platform had to be incapable of exceeding it — not merely instructed not to. The envelope was limited in the machine rather than in the protocol, and the stop behaviour was described in terms the submission could quote directly.
Ocean engineering institute
The room decided the geometry before the load did
A platform beside a basin had a fixed footprint, a low ceiling and constant humidity. Layout, sealing and material choices were settled before any performance figure was quoted, because none of them could be changed afterwards. Acceptance ran with the splash guard fitted, since that is how it would live.
Industrial R&D centre
They needed to replace our control law, not use it
The group’s research was the controller itself, so the platform had to accept commands below the pose layer and return state fast enough to close their loop. Which layer, what it returned and what stayed protected for safety reasons were fixed at the interface review — two pages, signed, before the frame was drawn.
We do not publish institution names or project identities without asking first. Where a funding body or a tender needs references, we approach the customer concerned and pass on whatever they are willing to put in writing — slower than a logo wall, and it survives being checked.
Recognise one of these constraints in your own laboratory? Name it and we will send how that one was resolved →
Recorded in the laboratory, not in a showroom
What open access and a calibrated stimulus look like
Three clips, each showing something a datasheet cannot. A platform filmed moving smoothly against a white wall proves that the motors turn, which nobody doubted.
Somebody else’s code, driving. A customer host issuing commands below the pose layer, with the platform’s state going back into their loop — the openness claim, shown rather than asserted.
Where the numbers in your methods section come from. Laser tracker measurement on the assembled platform, filmed through to the sheet it produces.
Boarding, restraint, stop. The sequence a review board asks about, run end to end, including what the platform does when the stop is pressed mid-motion.
Want to see the openness level your work needs before committing? Tell us which layer you have to reach and we will send that recording →
The part of the purchase that outlives the purchase
A methods section needs five lines the supplier has to provide
A paper, a thesis or an internal report has to say where the motion came from in enough detail that somebody else could arrive at the same result. Almost none of that information is on a datasheet, and almost all of it is decided during the build — which is why asking for it afterwards is the wrong time.
The five lines below are what reviewers, examiners and internal replication attempts actually ask for. We issue all five as part of the delivery record, because a laboratory that has to reverse-engineer its own equipment three years later has been sold a machine rather than an instrument.
None of this makes a result correct. It makes a result checkable, which is a different and more achievable thing for a supplier to be responsible for.
A capability belongs on a datasheet. A configuration belongs in a methods section.
Writing up work that ran on somebody else’s platform? Send the five lines you are missing and we will say which are recoverable →
Laser tracker measuring a six-axis motion platform in a laboratory
The 5-Line Methods Statement What gets issued, and why somebody will ask for it
| Line | Why a reviewer or a successor asks for it | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture and model designation | Establishes the mechanism class, which determines what the motion could and could not have been | Configuration record issued at delivery |
| The point pose is referenced to | A travel or attitude figure means nothing until the point it applies to is stated; participants and sensors sit away from the table | Agreed at the interface review, printed on the acceptance sheet |
| Commanded profile and how it was conditioned | Separates what was applied from what was recorded in the field or produced by a model | Conditioning report, listing every transformation as a number |
| Calibration method and the instrument used | Distinguishes a measured figure from a computed one, which is the first thing a careful reader checks | Identification record, naming the instrument |
| Controller firmware version at the time of the experiment | Makes a result attributable to a machine state; a platform updated mid-study is two apparatus, not one | Recorded at commissioning and at any service visit |
Line five is the one laboratories discover late. If a controller is updated between the pilot and the main study and nobody wrote down which version ran when, the two data sets can no longer be defended as having come from the same apparatus.
From a protocol to a machine somebody else could specify
Getting to a configuration a second laboratory could rebuild
Research equipment gets specified once and lived with for years, usually by people who were not in the room when it was bought. These five steps exist so the machine can be re-derived from documents rather than from whoever remembers the conversation.
The 5-Step Reproducible Configuration Path Each step ends in a document, not in an agreement
ST 01
Read the protocol
We read what the study varies and what it must hold constant. The motion requirement falls out of that distinction, and so does the list of things that must not be adjustable later.
Out: requirement note
ST 02
Check the envelope
The required stimulus or trajectory is run against the actuator envelope at your load and mounting height, before geometry is fixed rather than during commissioning.
Out: envelope check
ST 03
Fix the interface
Command layer, coordinate convention, units, state content and stop behaviour are written down and signed. This is where openness stops being an adjective.
Out: interface document
ST 04
Identify and calibrate
Geometric identification on the as-built machine, then calibration measured with an instrument rather than computed from encoders, on the platform that ships.
Out: identification record
ST 05
Issue the configuration
Everything above is issued as one record, written so that a group at another institution could specify the same machine from it without contacting us.
Out: configuration record
Have a protocol draft but no equipment specification yet? Send the draft and we will return the requirement note first →
The input most research enquiries leave out
“Open interface” is three different requests, and they cost different things
Almost every research enquiry asks for an open platform. Almost none of them says how far in they need to reach, and the three common answers are not variations of one requirement — they are three different machines to deliver and support.
Level 1 is what most groups need and few of them realise it: you command a pose, the platform solves the kinematics, and your work happens above that line. Level 2 puts your own kinematics in the loop. Level 3 puts your control law inside the servo loop, and that is where our responsibility for the machine’s behaviour has to be renegotiated rather than simply extended.
We build all three. What we will not do is leave it undefined and let it be discovered at commissioning, because the answer changes the controller architecture, the acceptance criteria and who is accountable when the platform does something unexpected.
Research groups buy modifiability. Modifiability has to be specified like any other requirement.
Not sure which level your work actually needs? Describe what your code has to do and we will name the level →
Three levels of motion-platform controller access, from pose commands to control laws inside the servo loop
The 3-Level Access Ladder What each level gives you, and what it asks of you
| Level | What you send the platform | What it buys the research | What changes for you |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Level 1 Pose | A pose, or a profile of poses, in a convention agreed in writing | The platform is a reliable stimulus source and stays out of your results | Nothing. Acceptance and warranty are ours in full |
|
Level 2 Leg length | Actuator commands, with your own kinematic solution above them | The mechanism model becomes part of what you can study or replace | Workspace protection still runs, but pose accuracy becomes a shared claim |
|
Level 3 Servo loop | Your control law, running where ours would | The controller itself becomes the object of research | Performance figures no longer describe the delivered machine; acceptance is agreed against a fallback configuration |
The third row is the honest one. At Level 3 we cannot warrant motion performance, because the thing producing the motion is yours — so acceptance runs on our configuration first, that record becomes the reference, and your work starts from there. Groups doing control research find this obvious; procurement departments occasionally do not, which is why it goes in writing early.
The 8-Line Research Definition What we need before a quotation means anything
| Line | What it changes on the platform | If it is left blank |
|---|---|---|
| Access level from the ladder above | Controller architecture, acceptance basis, support model | We quote Level 1 and the real requirement surfaces at commissioning |
| Apparatus mass and CG height above the interface | Frame section, actuator force, achievable stimulus | Sized for a low centred rig; a tall one costs travel |
| The stimulus or trajectory the protocol calls for | Envelope, and whether the study is inside it at all | The envelope is checked after purchase, which is the wrong order |
| Whether a person is on the platform | Envelope limiting, stop behaviour, access, restraint interface | A machine that cannot be described in an ethics submission |
| Where pose has to be referenced — eye point, sensor, tool | Every travel figure the study will quote | Figures stated at the table, which is not where the experiment happens |
| Room, environment and access route | Geometry, sealing, installation method | A platform that cannot be got into the building it was bought for |
| Session duration and duty across a working day | Thermal margin, service interval, cohort scheduling | Sized for intermittent use and run through participant sessions |
| How long the equipment has to remain supportable | Component selection and spare-part strategy | Selected for today, replaced by a PhD student in year four |
Eight lines, and research enquiries typically arrive with three. Write “unknown” on the rest — an unknown gets asked about, an estimate gets built to and then defended in a viva.
Agreed before manufacturing
What your host sends, and what happens at the edge of the workspace
Host link runs over TCP/UDP, serial or Modbus, with EtherCAT or CANopen below it. Command set, coordinate convention, pose order and units are fixed at the interface review and signed before anything is manufactured — a laboratory is a bad place to discover that two groups meant different things by “pitch positive”.
A commanded pose can be unreachable for reasons belonging to no single axis: a leg past its stroke, a joint past its angle, or a configuration where a small actuator motion produces a large platform one. Each pose and the path between poses is checked before anything moves, and one that fails is refused with a reason returned to the host — because a platform that silently clips a commanded stimulus contaminates a data set instead of stopping a run.
Where a protocol has an approved envelope, that envelope can be imposed in the machine as well as in your code, so a mistyped command cannot exceed what a review board sanctioned.
Integrating with a real-time host your group already runs? Send its command convention and we will state what changes →
CSCMotion six-axis motion platform rejecting a commanded pose outside its reachable workspace
Where the machine stops and the research begins
What belongs to the laboratory, and what we will not sell you
Research procurement goes wrong in a particular way: a supplier agrees to everything, and the gap between “motion equipment” and “a working experiment” is discovered by a postdoc six months later. These four zones go into the proposal so the gap is visible while it is still cheap.
Ours
- The mechanism, controller, drives and cabinet
- Motion that is generated, calibrated and recorded
- The interface at the level agreed on the access ladder
- Workspace protection, mechanical limits and the stop circuit
- The configuration record your methods section draws on
Never ours
- The research question, hypothesis and protocol
- Ethics approval, participant screening and recruitment
- Instrumentation, data acquisition and analysis
- Interpretation, and any conclusion drawn from the data
- Authorship, and any claim the work makes
Outside our class of machine
- Sub-micrometre or nanometre positioning
- Optical alignment and metrology-grade calibration
- Vacuum, cleanroom or cryogenic environments
- Delivery of a complete research instrument
Signed by both
- The access level and what it means for acceptance
- The stimulus envelope, and any limit imposed for a protocol
- Interface definition: commands, state, units, stop behaviour
- What the configuration record will contain
We would rather be excluded from a tender here than named in a paper we cannot stand behind.
Not sure which side of the precision line your tolerance sits on? Send the tolerance and how it was arrived at →
From an approved requirement to an accepted platform
Five stages, and what each side hands over
Research purchases run on committee dates, grant milestones and academic terms. What follows is written so each stage produces a document a project can be reported against, not just a step that happened.
STAGE 01
Requirement review
You send the protocol or its motion requirement, the apparatus masses, the access level and the room. We say whether it is our machine and which bench configuration it is.
Out: feasibility note
STAGE 02
Envelope & stimulus check
The required motion is run against the actuator envelope at your load and height. Where it does not fit you get the axis that binds, not a refusal.
Out: envelope check
STAGE 03
Interface freeze
Access level, command set, state content, units, stop behaviour and any protocol envelope limit are written and signed. After this the frame can be drawn.
Out: interface document
STAGE 04
Build & identification
Manufacture, assembly and geometric identification on the as-built machine, so the controller solves for the platform that exists rather than the nominal one.
Out: identification record
STAGE 05
Loaded acceptance
Your stimulus run at the apparatus load, repeated, with the spread reported. Witnessed on site or by live video, and issued as the configuration record.
Out: configuration record
Stage 03 carries the schedule. A research platform whose interface was never frozen becomes a commissioning project instead of a delivery, and commissioning projects do not fit inside a term.
Need this as a plan for a funding application or an internal approval? Ask for the five stages with your dates against them →
From the laboratory side of the line
Reference reading for a research specification
Four pieces research groups ask for once a motion requirement is real: the axis decision, the mechanism, the trade-off and the vocabulary a specification has to use.
Axis decision
3DOF or 6DOF, read from the requirement
What three axes cannot reproduce, what six cost in moving mass, and how to tell which side of the line a study falls on.
Mechanism
How six leg lengths become one pose
Inverse and forward kinematics, why the forward answer is not unique, and what a controller does about it.
Trade-off
Payload, stroke and acceleration under a duty cycle
Why raising one of the three lowers the others, and why a platform running participant sessions is sized against different numbers than a demonstrator.
Vocabulary
Motion platform glossary
Gross moving load, motion reference point, combined-axis travel, singularity — defined once, so a specification can be written without ambiguity.
Asked before a specification is written
Research motion platform FAQ
Can you deliver a complete research apparatus, not just the motion part?
No, and we say so before a quotation rather than after. We deliver the mechanism, the controller, the interface and the records that describe them. Instrumentation, data acquisition, the fixture holding your specimen and the analysis are the parts that make it your experiment, and they need knowledge of the research question rather than of the machine producing motion. Where a group wants one supplier for the whole apparatus, we are the wrong supplier and it is cheaper to know that in week one.
How open is the controller? Can we replace the control law with our own?
Yes, at Level 3 on the access ladder. There are three levels: command a pose and let the platform solve the kinematics; command leg lengths and run your own kinematics; or put your control law inside the servo loop. All three are things we build. What changes with depth is the acceptance basis — at Level 3 we cannot warrant motion performance, because the thing producing the motion is yours, so acceptance runs against our configuration first and that record becomes your reference. The hard-wired stop circuit and mechanical limits stay ours at every level.
What do we need to write in a methods section, and can you supply it?
Five lines: architecture and model designation, the point pose is referenced to, the commanded profile and how it was conditioned, the calibration method and the instrument used, and the controller firmware version at the time of the experiment. All five ship with the platform as part of the delivery record rather than being assembled on request years later. The fifth is the one groups discover late — a controller updated between a pilot and a main study makes two apparatus out of one, and that has to be recorded when it happens.
Can you do micrometre or nanometre positioning for our optical setup?
No. That class of machine is piezo, flexure or voice-coil driven, usually in vacuum or a cleanroom, and it is a different discipline rather than a smaller version of ours. Our mechanism resolves in hundredths of a millimetre and no configuration of it reaches micrometres. If your tolerance is written in µm or nm you will hear this on the first reply, because finding out later costs a funding cycle.
Can the platform carry human participants, and what do you supply for safety?
Yes, and that changes the machine rather than just the paperwork. We supply an envelope that can be mechanically limited to what your protocol was approved for, a hard-wired stop circuit brought to positions your submission names, defined behaviour on stop including where the platform comes to rest, and a boarding arrangement designed around your rig. What stays with the institution is the ethics submission itself, participant screening, the seat and harness, and every medical judgement involved. We can describe the machine in terms a review board can quote; we cannot make the submission.
Our funding requires a tender we cannot write around one supplier. Can you help without disqualifying yourselves?
Yes. We issue the configuration as a specification written in capability terms rather than model names — axis count, envelope at a stated load and reference point, access level, acceptance method and the records to be delivered. That is a document your procurement office can tender openly and other suppliers can bid against. If someone bids it better than we can, the specification did its job. A supplier who will only give you a specification that names their own product is telling you something about the product.
Why is your quotation higher than a supplier quoting the same payload and stroke?
Compare the conditions attached to the figures first. Ask at which pose and at what load the repeatability was measured, whether it was measured with an instrument or read from encoders, whether the travel is single-axis or combined, which access level the price assumes, and whether a calibration and configuration record is included or quoted as an extra. Those five account for most of the gaps we see. Where a competing quotation genuinely covers the same conditions and costs less, we would rather hear it than guess.
This equipment has to last a decade of student projects. What happens after the warranty?
Two things matter more than a support contract. First, what is on the load path is deliberately conventional: motors, drives, encoders and bearings in standard catalogue sizes, chosen so a maintenance team anywhere can source a replacement without us. Second, the configuration record means a group that has lost every person involved in the original purchase can still describe, service and re-specify the machine. Warranty is twelve months; the design intent is that the machine stays serviceable long after it lapses.
Commercial questions — lead time, payment terms, spares, installation — are answered in the full FAQ.
Send the experiment. We will tell you what the apparatus has to be.
A protocol draft, the apparatus mass, the access level you think you need and the room it goes in are enough for a first pass. If the requirement belongs to a precision positioning supplier or to a complete instrument builder, that is what you will hear back — and hearing it before a funding submission is worth more than a quotation.
What comes back first
- Whether the stimulus your protocol needs is inside our physics, naming the machine class if it is not
- Which access level the work actually requires, and what it changes for acceptance
- Which of the four bench configurations it is, and whether three axes or six suit the study
- The configuration written as a tenderable specification, plus a blank acceptance protocol