Abul K. M. Azad

Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines

Limited resources and other factors pose major challenges for engineering, technology, and science educators ability to provide adequate laboratory experience for students. An Internet accessible remote laboratory, which is an arrangement that allows laboratory equipment to be controlled remotely, addresses these difficulties and allows more efficient laboratory management.Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines collects current developments in the multidisciplinary creation of Internet accessible remote laboratories. This book offers perspectives on teaching with online laboratories, pedagogical design, system architectures for remote laboratories, future trends, and policy issues in the use of remote laboratories. It is useful resource for graduate and undergraduate students in electrical and computer engineering and computer science programs, as well as researchers who are interested in learning more about the current status of the field, as well as various approaches to remote laboratory design.

Creating a bridge to simulate simultaneous engineering experiences for senior undergraduate students

Launching new or improved products to the market typically involves extensive collaboration within and beyond the enterprise. Succeeding in a customer-driven market economy demands the practice of simultaneous engineering. The standard engineering or engineering technology curricula continue to make efforts in providing students with opportunities to engage in real-life projects that simulate simultaneous engineering. However, the educational community as a whole has much to implement in this area. This paper presents an approach used to nurture simultaneous engineering through a unique collaboration between instructors in different disciplines. Student teams, formed from three different classes, conceived problems and worked through a problem-solving model to design and develop solutions. An assessment of these interdisciplinary projects revealed significant learning outcomes and their relationships to the diversity of team members. The experiences of both students and instructors are described and some recommendations made for instructor teams that envisage interdisciplinary student projects.

A Virtual Environment for Studying Flexible Robot Manipulators

The paper presents a virtual environment for simulation and modeling a single-link flexible robotic manipulator. Simulation algorithm is based on the finite difference method where the systems governing dynamic equation is discretized and implemented. Intelligent modeling techniques are developed using neural network and genetic algorithm based techniques. All these have been developed and realized within a virtual environment using the Matlab, Simulink, and associated toolboxes. An interactive user friendly graphical user interface has also been presented. This environment has proven to be a valuable educational tool for understanding the behavior of flexible manipulator systems and can also be used as a computer aided teaching facility and a testbed for controller designs.

Cyber-physical systems in STEM disciplines

Exponential development of hardware and software technologies trigger the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT). In the educational and research areas, the IoT concept has been used to integrate physical engineering systems with the cloud. This has created a new generation of cyber-physical systems that can be available 24/7 for user access. This paper describes a potential structure of cyber-physical systems and their use in education and research. It illustrates the design and development of three cyber-physical systems-smart house, mobile robot, and an embedded processor. The paper describes the customization of these systems within a cyber-physical network with a focus on educational and research. Finally a secure web portal has been presented to provide use access to the developed systems.

Customizing household mobile robot for remote laboratories

Recent technological inventions in electronics and communication technologies allow us to do a range of activities over the Internet. Some of these activities we could not even think of a few years ago. With this new scenario, performing experiments that involve real hardware remotely over the Internet is now a reality. However, considering the complexities of technologies involved with remote laboratories, some of the experimental systems need to be modified/customized before they can be integrated within a remote laboratory system. One such system is a mobile robot that can be used for various student learning laboratory activities. This paper will report the customizing process of a household mobile robot so that it can be integrated within a remote laboratory facility.

Remote Structural Health Monitoring for Bridges

Effective and efficient structural monitoring of bridges is an important factor in ensuring a safe transportation system. In this effort this paper presents the design development and implementation of a cloud based laboratory scale bridge monitoring system that can assist the management for real-time monitoring. Accelerometers are used to collect the vibration data and then passed to the cloud after some initial processing through an embedded system. The cloud server as well as a local server are used for further data analysis and web presentation for remoter user.

Remote Monitoring and Detection of Rail Track Obstructions

Railway snow and sand monitoring has become an important safety issue, as they pose a serious threat to lives, property, and security. Snow disasters every year bring immeasurable losses to society, and sand obstructions can cause the shutdown of railway lines for weeks. This paper presents a detailed design and implementation of a non-contact railway monitoring system using a camera mounted on a mobile platform. The captured image is processed to identify the level of obstruction on a rail track. The goal is to transmit the obstruction data to the cloud in real time and enable monitoring using a web based graphical user interface. Once the obstruction crosses a predetermined threshold, the system will alert the officials.

Web-based e-learning for studying flexible manipulator systems

This paper presents a web-based e-leaning facility for simulation, modeling, and control of flexible manipulator systems. The simulation and modeling part includes finite difference and finite element simulations along with neural network and genetic algorithm based modeling strategies for flexible manipulator systems. The controller part constitutes a number of open-loop and closed-loop designs. Closed loop control designs include the classical, adaptive, and neuro-model based strategies. Matlab software package and its associated toolboxes are used to implement these. The Matlab web server is used as the gateway between the facility and web-access. ASP.NET technology and SQL database are utilized to develop web applications for access control, user account and password maintenance, administrative management, and facility utilization monitoring. The reported facility provides a flexible but effective approach of web-based interactive elearning facility of an engineering system. This can be extended to incorporate additional engineering systems within the e-learning framework.

Technology Based Delivery of an Undergraduate Laboratory Course

Use of Internet technology for offering physical laboratory courses are a relatively new challenge for engineering educators. Towards this the paper presents the design and development of an Internet based facility that will be used to offer an undergraduate laboratory course. The facility will enable students to perform experiments involving real-life hardware over the Internet. The system is developed by using commercially available hardware and software technologies. The highlighting features of the developed system are its cost effectiveness, modularity in design, Web security, and system and student evaluation facility. The system has the provision to monitor the extent of utilization of the facility to assess its usefulness. Multiple experiments can be delivered through the systems at any time; however, one experiment can be performed by a single student, while others can view the results

Intelligent Modelling of Flexible Manipulator Systems

Intelligent techniques, such as genetic algorithms (GAs) and neural networks (NNs) have attracted the attention of the wider control community due to their various advantageous features in relation to system identification and control. The major advantage of utilising GAs for system identification is that they simultaneously evaluate many points in the parameter space and converge towards the global solution. On the other hand, the use of NNs is inspired by their ability to mimic the capabilities of the brain such as learning, adaptation, association and generalisation. More importantly, NNs can address the nonlinearity of a system. This paper presents an investigation into the use of GAs and NNs to model a single-link flexible manipulator. The GA and NN based identification of the system are realised in this investigation by minimising the prediction error of the actual plant output and the model output. However, to allow interactive and user friendly features, that are desired especially in computer aided teaching and research, be incorporated a modelling, simulation and control environment is developed in this work for flexible manipulators using Matlab and Simulink. To this end the authors have developed an interactive and user-friendly environment referred to as SCEFMAS (Simulation and Control Environment of Flexible Manipulator Systems) [1]. As an on-going development process, the SCEFMAS environment is enhanced by the addition of intelligent modelling using NNs and GAs.