Abstract:

In this work, a complete remote lab for automatic control is designed and implemented with many experiments. It allows remote users to do physical experiment and instructors to personalize their experiments and evaluate the remote students.

The remote lab is composed of software and hardware devices : The iLab (internet Laboratory) environment is used as a deployment platform for our Remote Lab. It is installed on a server machine at Constantine 1 university, Algeria. It is compatible with LabVIEW and web browsers. The remote end-user needs only a web-browser and an installed plug-in to access to all the Remote Lab physical experiments via a GUI.

Many experimental setups are mounted. They give a practical aspect to theorical course followed by the students. The implemented control strategies are :
1. Optimal control,
2. Polynomial control,
3. State space control.

A classical PI/PID control strategy is added to serve as reference for comparison. Once logged, the user can choose an experiment and ask for a reservation time to lead the experiment. The user can then launch the experiment directly from its web-browser. At the end of the experiment, all the data generated during it are stored in the server. The data can be downloaded by the user and the instructor for analysis and evaluation. The instructor can also consult a journal including students connections history.

Keywords:

Remote Laboratories, e-learning, Automatic control, Electrical engineering.