Remote laboratory description 

Nowadays, remote laboratories and remote experiments are becoming a widely used education tool for improving the quality of the engineering educational process. Although classical hands-on laboratories are very useful and educational, they have many limitations regarding the space, time, and staff costs. They are usually fully occupied and the users have to conclude their research within the time allotted for experimental work. The problems with traditional laboratory work can be avoided by using remote experiments and remote laboratories. In remote experimentation, the users operate with the real system, although they are not physically present in the laboratory. The remote users can conduct their experiments by accessing the laboratory at any time that suits their schedule and from any remote location that is comfortable to them.

The remote control laboratory, implemented at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, offers remote experiments in the fields of mechatronics and automation. The experiments are performed on the state-of-the-art equipment which includes diverse electro-mechanical devices. For example, the user can through remote experiments learn how to operate a servo motor and obtain practical skills at the tuning of servo motor controller's parameters. Furthermore, the user can learn how some electrical systems operate and also get acquainted with the structure and operating principles of complex mechatronic devices, such as robots. Besides offering the variety of experiments that deal with the up-to-date practical tasks in mechatronics and automation, the remote laboratory also offers learning materials that enable the user to get a deeper insight into the field of mechatronics and particularly the problems that are covered in remote experiments.

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The remote laboratory is built as a user-friendly environment. Remote users only have to create their user account and then they can enter the web page. By using the booking table, the user can reserve in advance the time when they want to execute remote experiments. In the reserved time slot, nobody else can access the remote experiment. Therefore, the user can perform experiments as they were planning to. In the time slot when the reservation is valid, the control window appears in the web browser on user’s computer which enables them to take control over the experiment. During the execution of experiments, the user can change the predefined system parameters and observe the system response in textual and graphical formats. With the aid of the video transfer, the user can directly see the experimental device and the effects of their remotely given commands on the operating or motion of the device.