Mohamed Tawfik

Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR) for Remote Wiring and Measurement of Electronic Circuits on Breadboard

This paper reports on a state-of-the-art remote laboratory project called Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR). VISIR allows wiring and measuring of electronic circuits remotely on a virtual workbench that replicates physical circuit breadboards. The wiring mechanism is developed by means of a relay switching matrix connected to a PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) instrumentation platform. The entire equipment is controlled by LabVIEW server software, in addition to a measurement server software that protects the equipment from hazard connections by verifying input circuit designs, sent by students, before being executed. This paper addresses other approaches such as remote labs based on Data Acquisition Cards (DAQs), NetLab, and RemotElectLab, comparing them with VISIR in order to emphasize its singularity. Topics discussed are as follows: the technical description, software, operation cycle, features, and provided services. In addition, the feedback received by students at several universities and the encountered drawbacks along with the proposed solutions are highlighted. The paper finally addresses the ongoing and future challenges within the VISIR community including its integration with Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and iLab Shared Architecture (ISA), its new hardware version release that is based on LAN eXtensions for Instrumentation (LXI), and its new open platform version that supports federated access.

Expanding the Boundaries of the Classroom: Implementation of Remote Laboratories for Industrial Electronics Disciplines

It is apparent that implementation of practical sessions in engineering education paves the way for students to be familiar with instruments and, thus, with the industrial real world. In recent decades, the high cost and administration burdens of physical equipment have caused a significant decline in experimentation within engineering education. This situation has fostered the development and adoption of remote laboratories as a replacement. Recently, remote laboratories based on a large variety of technologies have been developed at multiple universities and adopted in industrial electronics engineering education. Furthermore, some of these laboratories are replicated at many universities. This was the commencement of a new mainstream that advocates a better remodeling of those laboratories to allow their allocation, sharing among universities, and their interoperable communication with other heterogeneous educational systems, e.g., learning management systems (LMSs). This article, on the one hand, reports on the design of the state-of-the-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics disciplines along with the cutting-edge technologies adopted. On the other hand, the article sheds light on the outstanding interoperable educational remote laboratories architectures, classifying them with regard to their exclusive features and provided services, and pointing out the limitations of each.

State-of-the-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications

There is no doubt that the implementation of practical sessions in engineering education paves the way for students to be familiar with the instruments and thus, with the industrial real-world. Moreover, they augment the learning outcomes by strengthening the understanding of scientific concepts and theories. Unfortunately, there exist a wide gap between the engineering educational curricula and the industrial real-world owing to the lack of experimentation availability. This is due to high cost and administration burdens that have hindered the adoption of practical sessions causing a significant decline in experimentation within engineering education. Recently, with the advent and exploitation of computer and communication technologies, remote laboratories have broadly proliferated among many universities. Remote laboratories provide on-line ubiquitous workbenches unconstrained by neither temporal nor geographical considerations and allow an interactive learning environment that maintains student attention. In this context, hundreds of remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications have been developed and numerous technologies have emerged in order to facilitate their construction and implementation. This paper reports on state-of-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications. and their design stages. The paper addresses many solutions in the development and the design stages, along with cutting edge technologies involved. This is in order to foster remote laboratories adoption within industrial electronics disciplines and hence, increase the industrial competencies in engineering education.

State of Art, Initiatives and New Challenges for Virtual and Remote Labs

Until a few decades ago, face to face classrooms and hand-on laboratories were the common solution for teaching theory and practice. But, new e-Learning tools have emerged and learning methodologies such as blended and distance learning have taken an important space in learning initiatives. Among them are virtual and remote Labs which provide student with a learning environment where can carry out the experiments through Internet and acquire the needed skills to develop his future jobs. This paper describes the importance of virtual and remote labs and their usage in learning scenarios.

Laboratory as a Service (LaaS): A model for developing and implementing remote laboratories as modular components

This contribution introduces a novel model, Laboratory as a Service (LaaS), for developing remote laboratories as independent component modules and implementing them as a set of loosely-coupled services to be consumed with a high level of abstraction and virtualization. LaaS aims to tackle the common concurrent challenges in remote laboratories developing and implementation such as inter-institutional sharing, interoperability with other heterogeneous systems, coupling with heterogeneous services and learning objects, difficulty of developing, and standardization.

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.

Remote laboratories for electrical & electronic subjects in new engineering grades

This paper discusses a new technology for making electric and electronic circuit experiments remotely. Virtual Instrument System in Reality (VISIR) has been implemented at the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) for new engineering grades distance laboratories. It gives a brief update of the project and its implementation, on the other hand, discusses its role at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UNED.

Shareable educational architectures for remote laboratories

The proliferation of remote laboratories in multiple disciplines of science has removed the cost and administration burdens that hinder the adoption of practical sessions in engineering education. Remote laboratories provide online workbenches unconstrained by neither temporal nor geographical considerations and allow an interactive learning that maintains student attention. Recently, remote laboratories have been developed at multiple universities and adopted in engineering education. Furthermore, some of these laboratories are replicated at many universities such as the electronic circuits remote labs: NetLab, VISIR, and labs based on NI ELVIS II. This was the commence of a new mainstream which advocates a better remodeling of those laboratories to allow their allocation, sharing among universities, and their communication with other heterogeneous systems, e.g., Learning Management Systems (LMS). In this context, numerous sharable educational architectures for remote labs integration have emerged such as LiLa, Lab2go, ISILab, DCL, WebLab Deusto, iLab (ISA), and Labshare (Sahara). This paper reports on the emerging solutions for remote laboratories implementation and deployment in engineering education in an efficient way. The paper discusses different integration scenarios pointing out features, limitations, and upcoming challenges.

Novel design and development of advanced remote electronics experiments

This article reports on the design and development of a new set of remotely controlled electronics experiments oriented to postgraduates and apprentices. Industrial‐related issues are emphasized to allow understanding of the behavior of electronics components. The experiments are fully delivered online with a high level of flexibility. Remote retrieved results are provided.

On the design of remote laboratories

This paper presents a thorough study on the available lab server software technologies for the design of remote laboratories. The paper focuses on the common outstanding technologies applied for this purpose such as LabVIEW and MATLAB. The paper addresses as well on other solutions such as high-level programming languages, e.g., C/C++ and .NET languages, pointing out the advantages, limitations, and applications of each. This is in order to ease the selection of the appropriate software when designing a remote lab. Furthermore, the paper points out applications in which various technologies are adopted in order to make use of the exclusive features of each. The study is preceded by a brief overview on the main hardware and software components in the construction of todays remote laboratory for engineering practice to emphasize the role of the controller server in the lab operation.