Doctoral Consortium Research Methods Course Overview on remote laboratories some representative laboratories and projects in the electrical engineering domain Ricardo Costa rjc@isep.ipp.pt / rjc@dei.uc.pt http://www.laboris.isep.ipp.pt/rjc Doctoral Consortium Research Methods Course Coimbra 29th January 2010 March 2006

Presentation outline Introduction Background on laboratory work and laboratory types Educational and technical issues Examples of remote laboratories Netlab – University of South Australia MIT iLab – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EUA) VISIR Project (Deusto Weblab) - University of Deusto (Spain) NUS Laboratory – National University of Singapore Other projects Conclusions and a future direction March 2006

Introduction In the last years there was a technology evolution; People adopted technology in their lives (e.g. Internet, PCs, mobile devices, etc.) So… it was an opportunity for applying technology to education motivating students for learning; Currently… technologies (internet + PC) are playing an important role in education providing flexibility for students and teachers. (e.g. Virtual Learning Environments like Moodle). However… Sciences & Engineering courses require laboratory work (experimental work) which are not included in those environments !

Background on laboratory work and lab. types Practical Work Theoretical Work Sciences & Engineering courses Documents, Images, animations, Etc. Exercises Research Group activities Simulations Laboratory work (experimental work) VLE -Virtual Learning Environments Is it possible to use technology (Internet + PCs) to facilitate/improve the conduction of experimental work ? Videoconference tools Personal Computers

Background on laboratory work and lab. types Students must be physically in the laboratory and the equipment is real. Students interact with both simulated and real equipment. Traditional labs (hands-on labs) Hybrid labs Laboratory work (experimental work) Virtual labs (simulated labs) Remote labs (weblabs) Students can interact with real equipment from everywhere at anytime using a simple device (PC, smart phone or mobile phone, etc.) connected to the internet. Locally, students conduct experiments using equipment modeled by software. Real results Flexibility Collaboration Motivation Costs may be reduced, etc.

Educational and technical issues Remote labs (weblabs) Educational issues: concern the requirements that a remote laboratory should meet to provide all the facilities to achieve good learning and teaching processes. Technical issues: concern the way each Educational issue should be technically implemented.

Educational and technical issues Following ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) laboratory work should provide: Conceptual understanding - activities should help students understand, solve problems and illustrate concepts and principles; Design skills - students should learn how to design, construct and research; Social skills - students must run laboratory activities not only individually but also in groups; Professional skills - technical skills and practical knowledge should be provided. Literature review conducted in 2006 by Ma and Nickerson based on 37 selected papers (2006)

Educational and technical issues Conceptual model of a remote laboratory infrastructure plus the involved actors. Etc. Etc.

Educational and technical issues PXI chassis Remote lab infrastructure LabVIEW interface

Examples of remote laboratories Netlab - University of South Australia (UniSA) - 2002 RC Transient Analysis, AC Phasor Analysis, Series Resonant Circuit and RC Filter Virtual Instrumentation Software Architecture (VISA) Circuit Builder; Collaborative tools; Booking system (real-time control mode) Website available in: http://netlab.unisa.edu.au/ Booking system Web interface

Examples of remote laboratories iLab – MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EUA) - 2000 Chemical eng., polymer crystallization, structural eng., signal processing, microelectronics iLab Shared Architecture (ISA): i) Client; ii) Service Broker; iii) Lab Server Adopted NI-Elvis platform from NI for creating electrical laboratories. Website available in: http://ilab.mit.edu/ServiceBroker/ NI-Elvis platform (2006) Microelectronics lab ISA architecture

Examples of remote laboratories VISIR Project - 2006 VISIR consortium: FH Campus Wien and Carinthia University of Applied Sciences - Austria, University of Deusto - Spain, University of Genoa - Italy, Gunadarma University - Indonesia and Uninova - Portugal. Goal: Create an open laboratory platform for the reuse of software modules; Ruled by the IVI Foundation - standard instrument programming interfaces; University of Deusto example - 2007 Electronics workbench; The website: https://www.weblab.deusto.es/ Virtual breadboard Virtual instrument shelf

Examples of remote laboratories NUS laboratory - National University of Singapore - 2000 Experiments: frequency modulation; coupled tank, 2D and 3D oscilloscope, helicopter and Robotic Soccer; Follows a double client-server architecture (client-webserver-controller); The website is available in: http://vlab.ee.nus.edu.sg/. Frequency modulation experiment Architecture

Other projects

Conclusions and a future direction There is an widespread of remote laboratories in S&E courses; Remote laboratories improve the S&E courses providing more and better laboratorial experiments (they are complementing traditional laboratories); But… remote laboratories follow specific and distinct technical implementations, with several hardware and software architectures. There is no standard solution for creating remote laboratory infrastructures which creates some problems: collaboration among institutions is weak, because it is difficult the reuse and interface different instruments/modules (I&M) used by a specific experiment; some institutions do not apply weblabs in their courses because they don’t have the required technical skills; costs may be high, since creating a weblab infrastructure requires a PC and associated software, together with several instruments (eventually comprehending several futures not required in a specific experiment), and; an architecture based on a single PC poses constraints for running several experiments, requiring scheduling techniques.

Conclusions and a future direction Solution: adopt reconfigurable devices like FPGA-based Boards following the IEEE 1451.0 Std. (which is a std. for interfacing smart transducers). FPGA-based Boards + IEEE 1451.0 Std.

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION Ricardo Costa Contacts: http://www.laboris.isep.ipp.pt/rjc rjc@isep.ipp.pt or rjc@dei.uc.pt March 2006

FPGA-based Board example Spartan-3E Starter Kit - XILINX A/D and D/A LCD display I/O ports Ethernet port 1/1

IEEE 1451.0 Std. IEEE Standard for a Smart Transducer Interface for Sensors and Actuators — Common Functions, Communication Protocols, and Transducer Electronic Data Sheet (TEDS) Formats. Approved on 2007. This standard provides a common basis for members of the IEEE 1451 family of standards to be interoperable. It defines the functions that are to be performed by a transducer interface module (TIM) and the common characteristics for all devices that implement the TIM. It specifies the formats for Transducer Electronic Data Sheets (TEDS). It defines a set of commands to facilitate the setup and control of the TIM as well as reading and writing the data used by the system. Application programming interfaces (APIs) are defined to facilitate communications with the TIM and with applications. 1/3

IEEE 1451.0 Std. – reference model (I) TIM - Transducer Interface Module NCAP – Network Capable Application Processor TEDS - Transducer Electronic Data Sheet 2/3

IEEE 1451.0 Std. – reference model (II) 3/3