부산대학교 도서관

A web system server especially suited for remote laboratories has been developed. Typical e-learning systems do not offer the possibility to perform a remote laboratory where real experiments can be done online, accessing real hardware located at the University facilities. Allowing students to connect to hardware systems remotely provides them with additional knowledge about real devices; very often, real laboratory devices are time or space restricted. The proposed LABCENTER platform is a general frame designed for remote laboratories connection. The platform is designed to allow an authorized student to connect to hardware systems. As direct hardware systems allow only a single user to be connected, a time-slot scheduling is included in the access system. The proposed platform includes a teacher administration system where new courses can be created and, inside courses, laboratory sessions can be defined. Every course and laboratory can be easily customized by teachers, without the need to know specific web programming languages. The web system is designed to connect to hardware systems through plug-ins specifically programmed to exchange information with the hardware. Using this approach, almost any experiment (hardware system) could be connected to the server. Once designed, the teacher can include the hardware connection in the layout editor, where the teacher can arrange all available plug-ins that will later be shown to the student. Using an individual plug-in philosophy directly connected to individual hardware allows more flexibility to design different laboratory proposal to students. As an example, two laboratory proposals are described. First, an Industrial Robotics laboratory to control an ABB industrial robot is defined, the teacher defines different proposals to students based on specific robot plug-in controlling the hardware. Secondly, an FPGA laboratory system is described, in which the student can download his own developed program and test if it works properly.