Laboratory of Things: Virtual Laboratory for Signal Processing Experiments
Laboratory of Things: Virtual Laboratory for Signal Processing Experiments

Summary/Abstract: Nowadays, the evolution of the educational system is mainly based on concepts like distance learning, open universities, virtual learning environments that become quite popular for teaching and learning. Anyhow, in the field of Computer Science, Technology and Engineering these learning environments are still relatively behind when discussing new technologies like distance learning. Due to their inherent necessity of providing effective skill acquisition and hands-on experience, those laboratories availability for online access is limited or restricted. The equivalent virtual laboratory can be based on remote access to real lab equipment or can be represented by a fully-software virtual replica. The Internet of Things (IoT) concept describes the connection between various physical devices into a global network, along with their identification and information share. The growth of the IoT technology expands the communication capability to, and all the data makes it alive. Perhaps the most used educational approach sharing the same idea with IoT is the concept of a remote or virtual laboratory. In this case, things are instruments and processes involved in laboratory experiments. This virtual environment provides a connection with dedicated hardware controlled via the Internet, and it often uses other network services. In this paper, the main research activity regards both software and hardware deployment criteria of a virtual laboratory used for educational purposes. Its applications are mainly focused, but not limited to the field of instrumentation and measurements, as well as in signal processing. The experiments are extended to the field of robotics through the remote control application of a servomotor and visualizing online its actual state.

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