Laboratory experimentation plays an essential role in engineering and scientific education. Virtual and remote labs reduce the costs associated with conventional hands-on labs due to their required equipment, space, and maintenance staff. Furthermore, they provide additional benefits such as supporting distance learning, improving lab accessibility to handicapped people, and increasing safety for dangerous experimentation. This paper analyzes the literature on virtual and remote labs from its beginnings to 2015, identifying the most influential publications, the most researched topics, and how the interest in those topics has evolved along the way. To do so, bibliographical data gathered from ISI Web of Science, Scopus and GRC2014 have been examined using two prominent bibliometric approaches: science mapping and performance analysis. Display Omitted Laboratory experimentation plays an essential role in engineering and sci-entific education.Virtual and remote labs are emerging as a valuable alternative to conven-tional hands-on labs.This paper analyzes the literature on virtual and remote labs from 1993 to 2015.4405 records retrieved from ISI Web of Science, Scopus and GRC2014 are processed.Two bibliometric approaches are applied: performance analysis and science mapping.

Virtual and remote labs in education

In this paper, we propose a novel approach in hardware and software architecture design for implementation of remote laboratories for automatic control. In our contribution, we show the solution with flexible connectivity at back-end, providing features of multipurpose usage with different types of experimental devices, and fully configurable client side application at front-end. The physical setup and communication principles of hardware architecture are based on two types of devices: the programmable logic controllers and industrial network routers. The user interface of client application is designed as a Web page, powered by optimized JavaScript, using the sophisticated on-the-fly content generation. To prove the suitability of the architecture, we compare it with other existing approaches of remote laboratory design. We evaluate their benefits and weaknesses, especially in terms of expense, implementation difficulty, and versatility of usage. In this paper, we also show a detailed example of remote laboratory implementation based on new architecture for thermo-optical educational system and provide three other examples of developed remote laboratories. Evaluation of remote laboratory usage and its benefits is provided to demonstrate the learning value of proposed architecture in education process.

A Flexible and Configurable Architecture for Automatic Control Remote Laboratories

This paper introduces the design and implementation of a plug-in free online 3-D interactive laboratory based on networked control system laboratory (NCSLab) framework. The system relying only on HTML5 provides full supports for control engineering experimentation. The users are allowed to design their own control algorithms and apply them to the remote test rigs. Using the web-based interface, multiple widgets such as real-time charts, virtual gauges, and live images are available to customize the monitoring interfaces. To enhance the sense of immersion, 3-D animations which are synchronized with the remote experimental processes are also provided. The users can watch and interact with the remote experiments through the 3-D replicas. Various HTML5 based toolkits are integrated seamlessly under the NCSLab framework. NCSLab provides visualized services for the whole process of control experimentation including remote monitoring, tuning, configuration, and control algorithm implementation. As the network delay could disturb the 3-D representation, a communication scheme using web protocols is also implemented. The feedback from teaching shows the general acceptance and effectiveness of NCSLab is notably high. As most existing online laboratories adopt either native applications or plug-ins, the methodologies and technologies used in NCSLab could be insightful for other online laboratories toward web-based cross-platform systems.

Plug-in Free Web-Based 3-D Interactive Laboratory for Control Engineering Education

The recent proliferation of easy to use electronic components and toolkits has introduced a large number of novices to designing and building electronic projects. Nevertheless, debugging circuits remains a difficult and time-consuming task. This paper presents a novel debugging tool for electronic design projects, the Toastboard, that aims to reduce debugging time by improving upon the standard paradigm of point-wise circuit measurements. Ubiquitous instrumentation allows for immediate visualization of an entire breadboard's state, meaning users can diagnose problems based on a wealth of data instead of having to form a single hypothesis and plan before taking a measurement. Basic connectivity information is displayed visually on the circuit itself and quantitative data is displayed on the accompanying web interface. Software-based testing functions further lower the expertise threshold for efficient debugging by diagnosing classes of circuit errors automatically. In an informal study, participants found the detailed, pervasive, and context-rich data from our tool helpful and potentially time-saving.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2984511.2984566

The Toastboard: Ubiquitous Instrumentation and Automated Checking of Breadboarded Circuits

The increasing adoption of remote laboratories in education along with the shift from eLearning 2.0 towards eLearning 3.0, have demanded several considerations in their implementation and delivery format. In response to these needs, this contribution introduces a novel model, Laboratory as a Service (LaaS), for developing remote laboratories as independent component modules and implementing them as a set of loosely-coupled services to be consumed with a high level of abstraction and virtualization. LaaS aims to tackle the common concurrent challenges in remote laboratories developing and implementation such as inter-institutional sharing, interoperability with other heterogeneous systems, coupling with heterogeneous services and learning objects, difficulty of developing, and standardization. Beyond the academic context, LaaS will facilitate the incorporation of remote laboratories in the ecosystem of the ubiquitous smart things surrounding us, which increases everyday with the approaching Web of Things (WoT) and artificial intelligence era. This, in turn, will create a breeding ground for online control, experimentation, and discovery—in either formal or informal context and with neither temporal nor geographical constraints.

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Laboratory as a Service (LaaS): a Novel Paradigm for Developing and Implementing Modular Remote Laboratories

This paper reports on a state-of-the-art remote laboratory project called Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR). VISIR allows wiring and measuring of electronic circuits remotely on a virtual workbench that replicates physical circuit breadboards. The wiring mechanism is developed by means of a relay switching matrix connected to a PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) instrumentation platform. The entire equipment is controlled by LabVIEW server software, in addition to a measurement server software that protects the equipment from hazard connections by verifying input circuit designs, sent by students, before being executed. This paper addresses other approaches such as remote labs based on Data Acquisition Cards (DAQs), NetLab, and RemotElectLab, comparing them with VISIR in order to emphasize its singularity. Topics discussed are as follows: the technical description, software, operation cycle, features, and provided services. In addition, the feedback received by students at several universities and the encountered drawbacks along with the proposed solutions are highlighted. The paper finally addresses the ongoing and future challenges within the VISIR community including its integration with Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and iLab Shared Architecture (ISA), its new hardware version release that is based on LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation (LXI), and its new open platform version that supports federated access.

kansson

Papers

Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) for Remote Wiring and Measurement of Electronic Circuits on Breadboard