The Remote Access to Laboratories: a Fully Open Integrated System

An existing lab experience can be made remotely accessible in a relatively easy way. The problem is with the design of a tool which allows any kind of experience to be made remotely accessible. The complexity of this tool is out of discussion. Several universities have been working on it for years. In fact, the Huelva University presented the work “A Complete Solution for Developing Remote Labs†in the 10th IFAC Symposium on Advances in Control Education (2013). Such complete solution was the result of those universities working together. Since then, the joint-work has continued and improvements have also been achieved. Hereafter, a fully open integrated system is presented whose scope is greater than that of 2013. It offers a way to easily implement cloud services for managing the configuration and access to all type of sensors, actuators and controllers (the devices base of the any remote lab). The access proposed is secure, controlled, organized and collaborativ

A Complete Solution for Developing Remote Labs

The use of remote laboratories for education is increasing because it is a method that allows a better use of resources (laboratories operate 24 hours a day) and students interact with real equipment from different locations. However, we can say that there are as many particular solutions as remote labs can be found today. In this paper, we present a design framework for remote laboratories, covering the various aspects involved and completely based on free software. Within this approach, professors have all the tools required to convert a laboratory experiment in a remote experiment. Moreover, they can also design an user interface that includes augmented reality techniques to enrich the user experience

Testing Bench for Remote Practical Training in Electric Machines

Remote labs are emerging as a necessary tool to support practical classes in engineering studies. It is due to the increasing number of students who combine their studies with work. In fact, there are numerous developments in areas such as electronics and automatic. However, there are only a few of them in the area of electrical machines. This paper presents a testing bench for remote practical training in electric machines. The security challenges presented by these experiments are overcome by software within the remote lab. In addition, a friendly interface has been designed including augmented reality to identify the different elements and to provide information on these items if the student requires it. The testing bench has been developed to be used in different kinds of electrical machines test

A Fully Integrated Open Solution for the Remote Operation of Pilot Plants

Nowadays remote access to systems in the instrumentation and measurement fields is both a reality and a challenge. There is a growing interest in replacing manual actions performed on site by remote actions carried out from anywhere around the world. To do that, besides the availability of suitable communication networks, it is necessary for the elements involved in the network to recognize each other, this latter task perhaps being the most complex one of the two. Integrating different hardware/software from different manufacturers into a single system with controlled remote access is not a trivial task. This paper presents a fully integrated open solution for the operation of pilot plants (scaled down, laboratory level industrial plants operated in university and other environments) using open access hardware/software on public networks. The proposed solution is independent of the nature of the pilot plant and its elements and can therefore be considered standard. In order to illustrate the capabilities of the proposed solution, two different types of pilot plant are presented

A preliminary evaluation of a low-cost multispectral sensor for non-destructive evaluation of olive fruits’ fat content

[Abstract] This study presents a preliminary evaluation of a low-cost multispectral device for the non-destructive assessment of olive fruits’ fat content. The developed device integrates a multispectral sensor, with a spectral response of 18 channels falling in a range from 410 to 940 nm, a calibrated light source, and a programmable board, in a ‘gun’-shaped device whose trigger activates sample reading. The device was used to measure 50 intact olive samples, which were subsequently chemically analysed to determine their actual fat content. Then, the multispectral readings from the 18 channels were used as input variables to train a neural network, using the actual fat content registers as reference data. The measured results, in terms of root-mean-square-error and coefficient of determination, shows promising capabilities of the developed low-cost device in the prediction of fat content of intact olives, what stands up for further development and experimentation.This work was supported by grant PID2020- 119217RA-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033, and grant IJC2019-040114-I funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033, and also by project TIColiVA with grant P18-RTJ-4539 funded by the Regional Government of Andalusia through the “PAIDI, Plan Andaluz de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación”. The authors would also like to thank “Cooperativa Nuestra Señora de la Oliva”, for generously providing the olive samples with which this research was conducted.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación; 10.13039/501100011033Junta de Andalucía; P18-RTJ-453

Controlled and Secure Access to Promote the Industrial Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) aims at facilitating access to all devices that are connected to the internet, both wired and wireless. This scenario can initially seem interesting. Nevertheless, it has a lack of privacy and danger of malicious interaction with the devices. Therefore, IoT, as it stands, is not suitable for companies to make their data and devices accessible through the internet, since they could find an untidy cloud, made up of devices without the necessary control of use. This paper proposes the use of the cloud computing advantages to develop a secure access global system based on a cloud. The company will decide the controlled access to the chosen devices and data, both by employees and external people. The developed system can be used from different scenarios such as: a public cloud; an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS); and a private cloud. To illustrate the operation of the developed system, a representative network of heterogeneous multiprotocol devices has been designed

Comparing Remote Laboratories from the Student Perspective

The objective of this paper is the identification of the variables which affect the acceptation by the students of two kinds of remote laboratories (photovoltaic panels and electric machines) in Higher Education. To achieve it, the Technology Acceptation Model is used and usability and usefulness are the considered factors. Two pilot experiences are carried out over a sample of 86 students which are studying the Energy Engineering Degree. 45 of them (52.3%) carry out the electric machines lab class and 41 (47.7%) the photovoltaic one. After a descriptive analysis, an exploratory and multivariate analysis is carried out. It allows the identification of relations between several variables which affect to the acceptation of both remote labs

Exploring the usability of a remote laboratory for photovoltaic systems

In engineering, remote laboratories present a triple role: they provide to the students the necessary contact with real devices, introduce them in the use of new technologies and make possible that the students conduct lab classes when and where they want. In this paper we present a remote lab devoted to photovoltaic power. The experimental system consists of two photovoltaic panels connected to a variable load and illuminated by a variable luminary. It allows the students to obtain different characteristic curves. The user interface has been integrated in Moodle. The system access management is carried out by software developed by authors. A didactic valuation process has been carried out to establish the acceptation of the educational experience by the students and to identify underlying factors. The hardware and software developed for this remote lab are not specific, but reusable for other remote lab experiences besides the one presented here

Easy Handling of Sensors and Actuators over TCP/IP Networks by Open Source Hardware/Software

There are several specific solutions for accessing sensors and actuators present in any process or system through a TCP/IP network, either local or a wide area type like the Internet. The usage of sensors and actuators of different nature and diverse interfaces (SPI, I2C, analogue, etc.) makes access to them from a network in a homogeneous and secure way more complex. A framework, including both software and hardware resources, is necessary to simplify and unify networked access to these devices. In this paper, a set of open-source software tools, specifically designed to cover the different issues concerning the access to sensors and actuators, and two proposed low-cost hardware architectures to operate with the abovementioned software tools are presented. They allow integrated and easy access to local or remote sensors and actuators. The software tools, integrated in the free authoring tool Easy Java and Javascript Simulations (EJS) solve the interaction issues between the subsystem that integrates sensors and actuators into the network, called convergence subsystem in this paper, and the Human Machine Interface (HMI)—this one designed using the intuitive graphical system of EJS—located on the user’s computer. The proposed hardware architectures and software tools are described and experimental implementations with the proposed tools are presented

Novel networked remote laboratory architecture for open connectivity based on PLC-OPC-LabVIEW-EJS integration : application in remote fuzzy control and sensors data acquisition

In this paper the design and implementation of a network for integrating Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), the Object-Linking and Embedding for Process Control protocol (OPC) and the open-source Easy Java Simulations (EJS) package is presented. A LabVIEW interface and the Java-Internet-LabVIEW (JIL) server complete the scheme for data exchange. This configuration allows the user to remotely interact with the PLC. Such integration can be considered a novelty in scientific literature for remote control and sensor data acquisition of industrial plants. An experimental application devoted to remote laboratories is developed to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of the proposed approach. The experiment to be conducted is the parameterization and supervision of a fuzzy controller of a DC servomotor. The graphical user interface has been developed with EJS and the fuzzy control is carried out by our own PLC. In fact, the distinctive features of the proposed novel network application are the integration of the OPC protocol to share information with the PLC and the application under control. The user can perform the tuning of the controller parameters online and observe in real time the effect on the servomotor behavior. The target group is engineering remote users, specifically in control- and automation-related tasks. The proposed architecture system is described and experimental results are presented.This work is a contribution of the DPI2013-43870 Project supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Furthermore, the authors are grateful to the developers of EJS and the extensions that have supported the implementation of the RL architecture presented here