By definition, a remote laboratory is the use of telecommunication to remotely conduct laboratory experiments with real measuring devices and real objects of investigation. Remote laboratory allows users to send control commands which can be pre-processed in order to prevent damage to real expensive equipment, to execute experiments in a real laboratory, and then collect the experimental results. LabsLand and LabViews are some examples of the existing remote laboratory platform.
When Covid-19 started spreading around the globe, many nations were forced to impose various degrees of lockdown to lower the infection rate of the pandemic. During the lockdown period, many companies conducted the ‘work from home’ concept which monitors employees’ works without being present at the office. This reduced chance of crowd gathering, hence, reduces the chance of the virus spreading.
The same thing happened in the educational sector. Nearly all universities created various online e-learning platforms to ensure minimum disruption to the semester’s lesson plan. While changing lectures and tutorial classes to online platforms is relatively simple, the online laboratory classes are the challenges for universities, especially for engineering courses that require conducting different types of practical experiments. Therefore, the remote laboratory has become more famous in the past 2 years.
General Setup of Remote Laboratory
Other than the traditional laboratory equipment, there is additional hardware added in order to set up the online remote laboratory. On the user’s side, the additional setup provides a user interface that allows the user to monitor and operate the experiment apparatus. The interface is able to manage the access to the laboratory, to ensure no multiple users conduct the same experiment at the same time. On the equipment side, the remote infrastructure is able to monitor the apparatus such as video cameras and microphones. In addition, the infrastructure is also able to control the apparatus such as motors and actuators.
Figure 2 shows the overall block diagram of the developed web-based remote laboratory which contains the functions mentioned above. The webcam allows video display and image captured using the computer interface in order to monitor the condition of experiments. Moreover, the server computer is located in the actual laboratory to control the experiment execution and communicate with client computers. In addition, the data acquisition system which consists of a data acquisition board and signal conditioning circuits allows the conversion of software instructions into required power actions on the actuators of laboratory equipment.
Advantages of Remote Lab
The benefits of remote laboratories are predominantly in engineering education. The remote laboratory is able to relax the geographical constraints, allowing students to access and conduct experiments without being restricted by physical locality which is the biggest benefit during the lockdown period.
Moreover, a remote laboratory allows the economics of scale to set up the laboratory. Even though the additional infrastructure increases the cost of building a laboratory, multiple universities or even the public are able to share the same remote laboratory. Most of the traditional laboratories serve the same purposes but every university requires setting up its own equipment. In addition, some traditional laboratories are only used once or twice a week and are always left empty after the students of a particular subject finished their experiments. Setting up one remote laboratory that can do the job for multiple traditional laboratories will maximize the cost efficiency of the lab.
Besides that, allowing students to access the laboratory virtually improves the safety and security of the laboratory. The setup of the laboratory is fixed and done by the lab assistant in prior, thus, there is little to no risk of catastrophic failures which will injure the students and the chances of equipment being damaged or going missing is unlikely.
Disadvantage of Remote Lab
Although the advanced technologies are able to create the best remote laboratory environment for students to conduct their practical experiments, they are still not able to gain the hands-on experience to set up the equipment. Most of the remote laboratories support the common experiments which are for education purposes. Without the equipment setup experience, students might face difficulties when it comes to preparation and setting up the unique research experiments.
Furthermore, students will lack debugging experience in unique experiments. This could impact the career choices of the students because, unlike education, the research works in engineering industries consist of many uncertainties. As an engineer, critical thinking and debugging skill are necessary for this career path.
Conclusion
In summary, the concept and basic setup of the remote laboratory have been presented. It is still highly beneficial for engineering education, especially during the pandemic time or in times where physical presence is challenging. By making the experiments available on the internet, students will have access to it without time or location restrictions. With the help of the government, different universities can share the available resources and allow the establishment of collaborative schemes for each other. Although there are some drawbacks in using remote laboratories, having a combination of remote and traditional laboratories is the simplest solution for the issue. Hence, students are able to experience the benefits of both experiments.
With the advancement of technology in virtual environments, remote laboratories will most definitely be more common in the future.
Originally published at http://filpal.wordpress.com on January 16, 2022.
