Introducing instrumentation and data acquisition to mechanical engineering students using LabVIEW

For several years, LabVIEW has been used within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde as the basis for introducing the basic concepts and practice of data acquisition, and more generally, instrumentation, to postgraduate engineering students and undergraduate project students. The objectives of introducing LabVIEW within the curriculum were to expose students to instrumentation and experimental analysis, and to create courseware that could be used flexibly for a range of students. It was also important that staff time for laboratory work be kept to manageable levels. A course module was developed which allows engineering students with very little or no previous knowledge of instrumentation or programming to become acquainted with the basics of programming, experimentation and data acquisition. The basic course structure has been used to teach both undergraduates and postgraduates as well as laboratory technical staff. The paper describes the objectives of the use of LabVIEW for teaching, the structure of the module developed, and the response of students who have been subjected to the course, and how it is intended to expand the delivery to greater student numbers

A Web-Based Distributed Virtual Educational Laboratory

Evolution and cost of measurement equipment, continuous training, and distance learning make it difficult to provide a complete set of updated workbenches to every student. For a preliminary familiarization and experimentation with instrumentation and measurement procedures, the use of virtual equipment is often considered more than sufficient from the didactic point of view, while the hands-on approach with real instrumentation and measurement systems still remains necessary to complete and refine the student's practical expertise. Creation and distribution of workbenches in networked computer laboratories therefore becomes attractive and convenient. This paper describes specification and design of a geographically distributed system based on commercially standard components

A Mobile Platform Using Software Defined Radios For Wireless Communication Systems Experimentation

A distinctive feature of wireless communication systems is implied by the fact that there is no physical connection between the transmitter and its corresponding receiver, which enables user mobility. However, experimenting with wireless communication systems is mostly done in the lab, where transmitters and receivers are setup on benches, in stationary settings. This prevents students from experiencing fading and other propagation effects associated with mobile wireless channels. This paper describes a mobile platform for wireless communication experimentation that enables students to run experiments beyond the confines of a traditional lab, in realistic settings that cover indoor and outdoor scenarios with both fixed and mobile propagation characteristics. The platform presented consists of a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) from National Instruments to implement the transmitter, an affordable RTL-SDR USB dongle to implement the receiver, a laptop computer used to program the SDR boards, and equipment for visualizing radio signal characteristics such as a portable spectrum analyzer or oscilloscope. This choice results in a moderate overall cost for the radio hardware required by the platform, which can be easily programmed using open source software such as GNU Radio as well as software packages like Matlab or LabView. For experimentation in wireless scenarios with low mobility (both indoors and outdoors, corresponding to walking speeds) the transmitter and receiver may be placed on push carts, while for higher mobility they may be placed on university owned golf carts moving at faster speeds on the designated campus routes. Furthermore, mobile transmitters and receivers may also be placed in cars driving on the campus streets and through the university parking lots/garages to enable experiments simulating vehicle to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications

Challenging the Computational Metaphor: Implications for How We Think

This paper explores the role of the traditional computational metaphor in our thinking as computer scientists, its influence on epistemological styles, and its implications for our understanding of cognition. It proposes to replace the conventional metaphor--a sequence of steps--with the notion of a community of interacting entities, and examines the ramifications of such a shift on these various ways in which we think