Ignacio Angulo

An easy to deploy street light control system based on wireless communication and LED technology.

This paper presents an intelligent streetlight management system based on LED lamps, designed to facilitate its deployment in existing facilities. The proposed approach, which is based on wireless communication technologies, will minimize the cost of investment of traditional wired systems, which always need civil engineering for burying of cable underground and consequently are more expensive than if the connection of the different nodes is made over the air. The deployed solution will be aware of their surroundings environmental conditions, a fact that will be approached for the system intelligence in order to learn, and later, apply dynamic rules. The knowledge of real time illumination needs, in terms of instant use of the street in which it is installed, will also feed our system, with the objective of providing tangible solutions to reduce energy consumption according to the contextual needs, an exact calculation of energy consumption and reliable mechanisms for preventive maintenance of facilities.

Time to play with a microcontroller managed mobile bot

Although science, engineering, and technology have an influence on humanitys present and future challenges, many students lack even a fundamental knowledge in these disciplines. Science teachers are looking for new teaching models and tools that provide skills for entering careers these fields. During the last two decades academia has recognized education games as a beneficial instrument for this purpose. This paper presents first steps in the design and development of the online education game, based on the remote experiments - a microcontroller managed mobile bot (ROBOT). A scenario, architecture, and design of the game will be described. The technological restrictions of the remote experiments will be discussed.

Acceptance, Usability and Usefulness of WebLab-Deusto from the Students Point of View

In the engineering curriculum, remote labs are becoming a popular learning tool. The advantages of these laboratories and the different deployments have been analyzed many times, but in this paper we want to show the results of the evaluation of WebLab-Deusto as a learning tool. This work is focused on the subjects programmable logic (PL) in the third year of Automation and Electronics Engineering and in Electronics Design (ED) of the fifth year of the same degree. The paper presents the results of the surveys done by students since 2004. This survey consists of fifteen questions and its main objective is to measure the acceptance, usability and usefulness of the remote laboratory developed at University of Deusto.

SecondLab: A remote laboratory under Second Life

The present work describes the implementation of a new remote lab, SecondLab, that allows students to control a microbot from Second Life. SecondLab works over WebLab-Deusto, the remote lab of the University of Deusto, giving the students the chance to work with real experiments from a social 3D-based immersive environment. This approach places the remote lab closer to the students, trying this way to increase their motivation to study science and engineering.

Easily Integrable platform for the deployment of a Remote Laboratory for microcontrollers

Remote laboratories are the natural solution in order to perform real experimentation under e-learning tools. Nevertheless these tools are the result of the research developed by the universities to cover their own needs without having in consideration the deployment of this technology by other institutions. This paper presents a hw prototype for a Remote Lab for microcontrollers that tries to solve these problems contributing new possibilities from the commercial and professional point of view.

LXI technologies for remote labs: an extension of the VISIR project

Several remote labs to support analog circuits are presented in this work. They are analyzed from the software and the hardware point of view. VISIR remote lab is one of these labs. After this analysis, a new VISIR remote lab approach is presented. This extension of the VISIR project is based on LXI technologies with the aim of becoming it in a remote lab easily interchangeable with other instruments. The addition of new components and experiments is also easier and cheaper.

VISIR deployment in undergraduate engineering practices

Practical sessions are the backbone of qualification in engineering education. It leads to a better understanding and allows mastering scientific concepts and theories. The lack of the availability of practical sessions at many universities and institutions owing to the cost and the unavailability of instructors the most of the time caused a significant decline in experimentation in engineering education over the last decades. Recently, with the progress of computer-based learning, remote laboratories have been proven to be the best alternative to the traditional ones, regarding to its low cost and ubiquity. Some universities have already started to deploy remote labs in their practical sessions. This contribution compiles diverse experiences based on the deployment of the remote laboratory, Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR), on the practices of undergraduate engineering grades at various universities within the VISIR community. It aims to show the impact of its usage on engineering education concerning the assessments of students and teachers as well.

Graphic technologies for virtual, remote and hybrid laboratories: WebLab-FPGA hybrid lab

Nowadays virtual, remote and hybrid (with both virtual and real remote components) laboratories depend on a large stack of technologies, and are almost always web-based. However, still today those laboratories which require relatively advanced graphics (3D or even 2D graphics) often rely on non-standard components and browser plugins, such as Adobe Flash or Java Applets. These components were necessary because of the severe limitations that standard Web technologies have traditionally had in regard to graphics and RIAs (Rich Internet Applications). This paper analyzes two of the most common non-standard technologies that are still used today in remote laboratories. It also proposes two alternatives which make use of modern Web technologies (Canvas and WebGL). Additionally, it illustrates one of the proposed alternatives (WebGL) with an example: Weblab-FPGA-Watertank, a hybrid laboratory implemented at the University of Deusto under the Weblab-Deusto RLMS (Remote Laboratory Management System), which lets users program a real FPGA device remotely to control a virtual environment. Users require only an up-to-date browser and require no plugins whatsoever. The fully-featured virtual environment is rendered through WebGL. Finally, conclusions are drawn from the analysis and from the WebLab-FPGA-Watertank experience.

Ubiquitous Connected Train Based on Train-to-Ground and Intra-Wagon Communications Capable of Providing on Trip Customized Digital Services for Passengers

During the last years, the application of different wireless technologies has been explored in order to enable Internet connectivity from vehicles. In addition, the widespread adoption of smartphones by citizens represents a great opportunity to integrate such nomadic devices inside vehicles in order to provide new and personalized on trip services for passengers. In this paper, a proposal of communication architecture to provide the ubiquitous connectivity needed to enhance the smart train concept is presented and preliminarily tested. It combines an intra-wagon communication system based on nomadic devices connected through a Bluetooth Piconet Network with a highly innovative train-to-ground communication system. In order to validate this communication solution, several tests and simulations have been performed and their results are described in this paper.

Addressing low cost remote laboratories through federation protocols: Fish tank remote laboratory

A remote laboratory is a software and hardware tool which enables students to use real equipment -located in an educational institution- through the Internet. This way, students can experiment as if they were using the laboratories with their own hands. There are usually two approaches when designing remote laboratories: relying on small, inexpensive devices that can be deployed anywhere or relying software rich software infrastructures that support high load of users, providing panel administration, access to other institutional servers (e.g. directories such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol “LDAP”), etc. With distributed remote laboratory architectures, it is possible to have the laboratory server on the former approach, but the management usually relies on the latter. In certain entities, such as secondary schools or farm schools, they may not be willing to buy and maintain a dedicated server for remote laboratories, and therefore the former approach is more adequate. However, a tradeoff is being made between management capabilities and how easy is to deploy the system. This contribution shows how federation could help in solving this tradeoff, and it uses a real fish tank remote laboratory as a case study.