Smart Industry & Smart Education

This paper presents a concept, its implementation, and evaluation for a cloud-based, blended learning lab (CBLL) for PLC education. The CBLL combines training on a real on-site PLC with technology models from the cloud. The technology models are loaded into the learner’s web browser from the cloud where they are run. The models are linked directly with the inputs and outputs of the PLC via a CloudIO adapter to enable a PLC program to control the technology models. Management of the technology models is performed via an IIoT platform where model use is offered as a service. The learner can use the models on-site without any licenses or software being installed.

The field of study interested in the development of computer algorithm for transforming data into intelligent actions is known as machine learning. The paper investigates different machine learning classification algorithms and their effectiveness in environmental sound recognition. Efforts are made in selecting the suitable audio feature extraction technique and finding a direct connection between audio feature extraction technique and the quality of the algorithm performance. These techniques are compared to determine the most suitable for solving the problem of environmental sound recognition.

Undetected diabetes is a global issue, estimated to over 200 million persons affected. Engineering opportunities in capturing early signs of diabetes has a potential due to the complexity to interpret early signs and link it to diabetes. Persons with untreated diabetes are doubled in risk of getting cardiovascular diseases and may also suffer other consequent diseases. In Sweden, approximately 450 thousand have diabetes where 80–90% are of type 2 with 1/4 unaware of it, i.e. approx. 100 thousand. Screening approaches, searching specifically for diabetes in persons not showing symptoms has been initiated with positive results. However, some general drawbacks of screening such as false sense of security are an issue. In this publication, we focus upon in home measurements and empowering of the individual in identifying early signs of diabetes. The methods in this publication are to gather data, evaluate and give suggestion if clinical test to confirm or reject diabetes. In home measurements, education process with companies for innovation possibilities.

Digitalization of all scopes of activities along with the rapid accumulation of information, development of technologies and the processes’ intellectualization pose global challenges in both the economy and education. Information technologies become an integral part of the human living space, causing the emergence of a new digital (networking) generation of people, for whom a mobile phone, a computer, and the Internet are the natural elements of their life. A universal approach to Smart Education is needed. Business requires engineers who can design, create and operate complex technical systems. At the same time, principles of sustainable development and minimization of negative environmental impacts must be observed. Educational system should ensure the quality of training engineers, who are needed by business and society. To realize this goal, there are opportunities associated with the use of such educational technologies as modeling, simulators, augmented and virtual reality. Ways to improve educational process with use of simulators and a virtual reality, as well as examples of using such training technologies to increase students’ motivation when training them for the automotive company are presented in the article.

The main challenge aerospace industries are facing in recent times has been triggered by the remarkable increase in commercial aircraft demand. To address this challenge, aircraft manufacturers need to explore ways to increase capacity and workflow through process optimisation and automation. This study focusses on the optimisation of component flow and inventory during the assembly of the A320 Family wings’ at Airbus (Broughton, UK) plant through Discrete Event Simulation (DES).This research measured the likely impact of future changes in the wing assembly process, using simulation by: mapping of component flow from delivery to the point of use, simulation of current logistics scenario (AS-IS), simulation of future logistics scenarios (TO-BE) that include proposed changes for optimising flow and managing capacity surge, and testing and validation of mapping and simulation. The developed DES model demonstrated the impact of changes planned to be implemented by showing a considerable increase in production capacity growth, by achieving a target of 50% increase of aircraft rate/month within one year. It also highlighted the main problems causing blockages and other non-value activities in the process.

The demonstration shows a cloud-based industrial controller by an example of an automated processing and testing station. The station is completely controlled by a Cloud-based Industrial Control Service (CICS). The control program is implemented as an IEC 61131-3 program by conventional industrial programming tools, for example, by PC WORX or CODESYS.

In the 60’s, the first Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Software appeared. Nowadays, it belongs to the most common tools used in industry. Nowadays, digital simulations of complete industrial processes are implemented in factories. This new concept is one of the main components of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Indeed, thanks to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and the huge amount of data produced by the different systems of the production lines, it is now possible to simulate all these systems with virtual twins. These twins are used in order to validate real industrial processes before to be built. They are also efficient learning tools, allowing the students to be trained in absolute safe conditions. In this article, we present how students use virtual industrial processes driven by Programming Logic Controllers (PLCs) programmed in Sequential Function Chart (SFC) language.

VISIR remote lab, designed as a learning tool in subjects related with Electricity and Electronics in undergraduate and graduate courses, has unlikely been used in secondary school technology teaching up today. In the following document, a research work is presented in order to show the development, implementation and learning outcomes of an educational experience for secondary students, using VISIR remote lab as a means to carry out practices of measuring and introducing a methodology based on the features of Bloom-Anderson’s taxonomy. The experience have been guided by a work document in which explanations and didactic activities have been included, specifically designed under a cognitive skills development focus.

Within two TEMPUS projects, we implemented the GOLDi remote lab infrastructure at ten universities in Armenia, Georgia, Germany and Ukraine. Our interactive hybrid online lab – called GOLDi (Grid of Online Lab Devices Ilmenau) – stands for a grid concept to realize a universal remote lab platform. In addition to the actual use as a remote lab for educational purposes, maintenance is of crucial importance - especially if the lab is part of a cluster of distributed labs.Until this day there are still major issues concerning the maintenance and reliability of the hardware setup at each GOLDi location. In this article, we propose a new internal Ethernet based communication implementation. We compare the new implementation with the existing CAN based implementation in regards to different characteristics such as cost of implementation, reliability and maintainability.

Independent temperature controllers are usually robust and energy efficient because they do not heat or cool the entire building, including spaces that are not occupied, to the same temperature. Moreover, they can use tested and true temperature control techniques such as Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID). Unfortunately, independent temperature controllers usually do not coordinate temperature control of multiple spaces in buildings or multiple buildings maintained by the same organizations to optimize total energy usage. In this paper, we present a multi-agent system that uses fuzzy logic to supervise independent PID temperature controllers. The system has a supervisor agent that adjusts the setpoints of the PID controllers based on total energy cost and other parameters managed by specialized agents. The agents are built using a mix of commercial off-the-shelf software, including LabView, Microsoft Excel, KEPServer Ex5 OPC server, and custom written code. In addition, the multi-agent system uses Open Platform Connectivity (OPC) technology to share data. OPC technology enables the supervisor agent to communicate with the independent temperature controller agents over the Internet making the system scalable to multi-building or multi-unit supervisory control – even if the buildings or the units are not in the same geographical location.

This paper proposes a new way of experimenting with online (virtual or remote) interactive laboratories. Experimentation possibilities can be opened by allowing students to interact with the online laboratory using a visual and textual programming language that can communicate with the laboratory application and which includes tools to define and plot graphs. The combination of interactive laboratories with a visual and textual programming language, benefits both teachers and students: the former have a wider range of possibilities when considering the assignments that can be proposed and the latter acquire a greater knowledge of the plant under study by facing a more inquiry-based approach for online experimentation. To demonstrate the usefulness and possibilities of this environment, a Furuta pendulum system has been successfully used in both its remote and its virtual version.

As opposed to what other tools in the FIRE community, such as jFed [1], offer to the experimenter, Triangle Portal provides a simplified access to the definition of experiments and can coexist with the current FIRE tools. The way to integrate the Triangle Portal as part of existing experimentation testbeds is to offer a set of “canned” scenarios that will be specified by the Portal users during the phase of definition of their testing campaign. The testbed will then use the API REST provided by the Portal to access the information provided by the experimenter, such as the scenario, the application under test or a file containing the user actions to be replayed during the tests. The testbed will use this information to run the testing campaign and return the test results to the Portal.

The contribution brings a new solution for remote laboratories. Benefits and effectiveness of hands-on, virtual, and remote labs have been discussed for decades. We have been developing professional and DIY real remote labs for 15 years. Despite our efforts, real remote experiments are unfortunately not so easily feasible as traditional hands-on ones. Experimenting at schools split into three isolated approaches: traditional hands-on labs (including PC-aided experiments), virtual experiments (also simulations, applets), and remote experiments. Recently, some effort to integrate these approaches has appeared (e.g. integrated e-learning strategy) although the integration with hands-on experiments is still missing. This state can be explained by high complexity of remote labs and the other limits (budget, availability of HW and SW solution, etc.). Our aim is to show that real remote labs can be easily performed as traditional hands-on labs, and they can be created with both professional equipment and cheap hardware components like Arduino. The goal is an introduction of a new experiment type “hands-on-remote” that is simultaneously hands-on and remotely controlled without need for further modifications. Students themselves may create such experiment or just observe the setup prepared by their teacher, and even operate it remotely by their mobile devices (BYOD). Students may access the experiment from the classroom, school building, and perhaps from their homes after school. Examples of remote labs based both on professional measurement system iSES and Arduino-Uno platform will be presented. Beginners need only an Arduino Uno board with sensors, our freely downloadable “Remduino Lab SDK”.

Power-Line Communication (PLC) consists in transmitting communications signals through the power line. The electricity network is a complex communication medium with properties that depend on the topology of the grid and on the usage pattern of the connected devices. Not only the variable disturbances of the communication channel, but also the market requirements for continuous evolution, enforce extensive laboratory testing for technology improvement. A typical laboratory setup for PLC technology testing involves several analogue elements, and requires long and expensive testing tasks. This article demonstrates how these procedures can greatly benefit from the virtualization concept to increase the testing speed and repeatability, and to reduce the operation and maintenance costs.

In the last few years, performing experimentation over remote laboratory became a reality. In fact, for managing a large class, this new situation needs some appropriate pedagogical scheme. Else, the entire system must be reviewed. We have developed a method to set up an automatic assessment in remote experimentation over a flexible remote laboratory. Automatic assessment in remote experimentation can provide important benefits including: improved situation awareness, more accurate management for large class, and improved overall performance. We present a new approach to set up online experimentation under a flexible remote laboratory. In fact, we develop a particular pedagogical scheme for remote experimentation. On the basis of this analysis, we developed an automatic assessment system to evaluate remote experimentation for a large number of students. Hardware architecture consists of servers; some measurement instruments and electronic circuits, where the software architecture is based on web development tools. Furthermore, to embed pedagogical material for our system, we have used Moodle LMS platform. We illustrate an example of remote experimentation prototype which allows students to manipulate a dipole circuit workbench remotely. A set of students can connect to the remote lab at any time and perform manipulations and obtain personal and appropriate results from the shared equipment. The system includes auto test with customized interfaces for accessing to the same platform. Some results of manipulation are presented.

This paper presents a way of speed regulation of double acting pneumatic cylinder, using remotely controlled one-way flow control valve. For this purpose, at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad, an experimental setup is developed and implemented. The control system is realized using the following hardware components: Arduino Yun for system control, step motor coupled with one-way flow control valve for speed regulation, directional control valve and double acting cylinder. CEyeClon Viewer is used as a software component for remote access to the system. In addition, the user application is developed. The application allows setting the input parameters and starting the experiment. After experiment execution, the measured results, which represent the times needed for the cylinder extraction as well as average speeds, are shown in the form of diagram. Using Web camera, user can monitor the whole system during experiment execution.

The Objective of this Virtual Lab is to give an access to student community to learn the concepts of Analog Electronics circuits by Experiential Learning. Virtual lab, allows user to analyze basic analog electronic circuits by controlling the experiments remotely and measuring necessary nodal voltages virtually. In phase-I of virtual lab, experiments on rectifiers and regulators has been considered. User while performing experiments through virtual lab will have the similar experience of conducting it live. The Virtual Lab will provide complete information about the circuit under test, design specifications, waveforms at various test points and tabular column with expected values. User will be able to make the necessary measurements at the test points using National Instruments (NI) Analog Discovery-2 NI Edition and other interfacing circuitry. Video tutorials will guide the user to perform experiments without any difficulties. Virtual lab is designed by keeping students community in mind and made options to vary many circuit parameters. This virtual lab gives a platform for the students to solidify their concepts learned in the classroom by repeatedly doing experiments and with variations in the circuit parameters. Anyone from Anywhere at Anytime can access the circuits to perform experiments on Half wave, Full wave and Bridge rectifiers along with option to perform voltage regulation.

Black Sigatoka is a disease caused by the fungus Mycosphaerella fijiensis Morelet and is considered worldwide as one of the most destructive diseases in the musaceae, as it produces foliar necrosis in the leaves of banana and banana plants, and consequently the fruits do not possess the necessary characteristics for their consumption or for an effective commercial activity. This disease has spread to all areas where plantains or bananas are grown. The goal of this paper is the use of prediction models of Black Sigatoka outbreak in banana cultivation in order to design a wireless sensors network for remote monitoring of climatic variables related to the disease, allowing, this way, scheduling of fungicide treatments for early removal.

In the article authors give research results of the influence of the movement direction of earth-moving machines on the stability of the remote control data transmission through mobile communication channels. The authors carried out an extensive analysis of the state of research in this and related fields. If movement direction of earth-moving and construction machines changes with respect to the nearest radio transmitting tower of the mobile communication base station, theoretically an instability in data transmission of data over mobile communication channels will appear. To establish the admissibility of such instability, experiments were performed in real conditions, the results of which are presented in the article.

Since power dissipation is becoming a significant issue and requiring more consideration in the early design stage, circuit designers must now be experienced in low-power techniques to enhance designing digital systems. Therefore, when teaching low-power design techniques in electrical and computer engineering education, a tool or a method must be made available that enables students to estimate the power dissipation of their digital circuits during the design process. This contribution presents a novel approach, the low-power design remote laboratory system that has been developed at the Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University of Applied Sciences to estimate the power dissipation of a digital circuit remotely via the internet using physical instruments and providing real data. The design takes place at abstraction level and the real data is measured at the low level from the hardware devices. The low level provides more information, which is required for accurately measured values that are hidden at the high level. The technical performance results on using the remote system show that the students are enabled to implement their digital design and to meet the performance targets of reliability as well as to observe almost all influencing factors on the design’s power dissipation.

Electrical Power Transmission Lines are used to transferElectrical Energy from the Generating site such as power plant to and Electric Substation. The interconnected lines that facilitate this are known as Transmission Network. These transmission lines are different from that of the high voltage substations to the consumers, which is referred to as distribution network. Study of transmission lines is an important topic in the courses offered under Electrical Engineering program. This includes understanding of certain fundamental concepts related to Electrical Power Transmission Lines such as Ferranti effect, ABCD parameters and their analysis, Transmission lines efficiency and calculation of losses, Modelling of Transmission lines (T and Pi sections), Surge Impedance loading and so on. Typically, Transmission Line Simulators are used to study the concepts mentioned above. Students perform experiments on these Transmission Lines Simulators that represent the equivalent model of the real Electrical Power Transmission Lines running for several kilometres of distances are the experimentation platforms on which several aspects of Transmission lines are studied. In the context of several Engineering Institutions, simulators such as these are a scarce resource and typically a given institution would have at most 1 such setup. This is because of the cost and size of these simulators.

The sustainability of remote laboratories is considered both from the point of view of sustainable system architecture and of sustainable teaching outcomes. The goal of the work is to provide an approach for making remote laboratory systems build on components with limited (software) resources more sustainable, meaning more long-lasting, more economic, more efficient. We consider the whole of the sustainability of the development process, sustainability of system architecture and sustainability of teaching outcomes.

Teachers often have their own professional requirements for e-learning systems. However, these are often only subliminal known. In times of Industry 4.0 and AI, teachers e.g. in engineering are also confronted with the need to teach increasingly complex concepts. Those are only two of the reasons why an e-learning recommendation system has been developed to support teachers in choosing an e-learning format. To better understand the perspective of the teachers, the central question is: What are the teachers’ requirements for the e-learning formats examined here? After a introduction to the recommendation system, the analysis of the collected data is explained. Based on recommendations given in the past, we examine which requirements have led to a clear recommendation or to the advice against individual formats. Among the formats considered here, virtual reality and simulations are the most recommended on average, as they are best suited to the teacher’s requirements. Subsequently, the profound results in the areas of virtual laboratories, virtual reality, simulations and gaming-based solutions will be presented and discussed. However, the results also show how diverse the requirements are. The recommendation for e-learning developers and companies is therefore: e-learning solutions should be adaptive for teachers and students. Finally, it can be concluded that in the future teachers will have to use a mix of different e-learning solutions in order to be able to teach the increasingly complex world of tomorrow.

In recent years, education talks have shifted from the areas: “classes,” “schools”, “universities” to the “learning environment”. This is because the Internet has introduced “virtual environment” into education. The map of study places has been significantly changed, adding to temporal, spatial and geographical learning, learning in an environment without geographical and temporal boundaries. The term “learning environment” now includes the classes, schools and universities we are talking about above, but also the virtual environment with its own classes, schools and universities, or other forms of education that have not been seen before (e.g. MOOC’s). This process has determined a strong modification of the current teaching theories of learning.The paper examines how an important learning element in the “learning by doing” category called “remote experiment”, which belongs to the virtual environment, contributes to the development of creative thinking. As is know, the first who underline the importance of divergent thinking in creativity was Guilford. After him, the development of this subject has become exponential. The paper analyzes, using statistically methods, how the elements of divergent thinking such as fluency, originality, and flexibility are found in a remote experiment work, and how these independent variables can be regarded as producing “treatment effects”, that is they can increase the potential of creativity.

This paper presents new form of remote experiment “Electromagnetic Remote Laboratory”, which is designed for students and educational purposes and integrated in REMLABNET system. The remote experiment was built using universal and reliable Intelligent School Experimental System (ISES). The main new feature of the remote experiment “Electromagnetic Remote Laboratory” is the output of information in data sets, which gives the possibility to further analyze this data to obtain insight into theory of electromagnetism of Faraday. Another new feature of the remote experiment is the embedded synchronized simulation, which further deepens the insight into Faraday’s theory of electromagnetism.

A “smart” grid is capable of providing power from multiple and widely distributed sources such as from wind turbines, concentrating solar power systems, photovoltaic panels and so on. Further, Energy storage devices such as Batteries and Fuel cells would be an integral part of Electricity grid in addition to conventional power generation techniques. A smart grid uses digital technology to improve reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric grid system. Existing electric infrastructure in several parts of India is aging and it is being pushed to do more than it was originally designed to do, as the demand for electricity is increasing encompassing diverse sectors from Manufacturing to Agriculture and now with increased efficiencies of Electric cars built by companies such as Tesla, the demand for Electricity is expected to rise multi fold. Modernizing the grid to make it “smarter” and more resilient through the use of cutting-edge technologies, equipment, and controls that communicate and work together to deliver electricity more reliably and efficiently would naturally be the necessary infrastructural upgrade to facilitate such a change. Consumers can better manage their own energy consumption and costs because they have easier access to their own data. Utilities also benefit from a modernized grid, including improved security, reduced peak loads, increased integration of renewable, and lower operational costs. Smart grid Remote lab is developed and equipped in-order to provide a platform for the students and research scholars to undergo their project works remotely. Here the energy generated by modules from both solar and wind sources installed over the roof top will be fed to our control system and will be switched between ON Grid and OFF Grid modes. The system is interfaces with LabVIEW and its user interface design allows students/researchers to observe the real-time electrical parameters during all levels of its operation.

The number of students in the higher education system in South and Eastern Mediterranean Basin countries more than doubled in the last 15 years [1]. This positive step forward creates important difficulties for universities forced to handle overcrowded classes. In STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) related courses, one promising solution involves the development of accredited e-engineering courses, as a very convenient and efficient way of dealing with the constantly surging number of students.The e-LIVES (e-Learning InnoVative Engineering Solutions) project, a recently approved Erasmus+ program project whose consortium includes European Institutions of higher education from France, Portugal, Belgium and Spain, and from the South and Eastern Mediterranean Basin, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, aims to address the problem by providing solutions based on e-engineering. Profiting from the experience gained with the EOLES (Electronics and Optics e-Learning for Embedded Systems) course, a fully online e-engineering third-year accredited Bachelor degree course, the long-lasting result of a previous TEMPUS program project, the EOLES project [2], the consortium hopes to provide the knowledge and the tools needed for partner countries to become autonomous in the development and accreditation of their own e-engineering courses.

Online laboratories are a broad field that includes virtual laboratories, remote laboratories and hybrid configurations. The assessment of the reliability for these systems requires the identification of the laboratory components or human actions that can lead to a possible failure in the online laboratory normal operation. Having now bigger online laboratories implementations that provide access to hundreds or even thousands of users, the identification and evaluation of failures, causes and developing countermeasures, such as recovery mechanisms or alerts, is becoming increasingly important in order to provide more reliable systems. The paper presents a model for the assessment of failures, causes and countermeasures (actions, alerts or practices) that mitigate or eliminate failures. The model was created based on common failures reported by online laboratories users and based on the testing of a remote laboratory prototype implemented specifically for this purpose. The model for the assessment of the reliability of the online laboratory systems can be used to support reliability in implementations that are based on software components, such as virtual laboratories; and also in implementations that combine hardware and software components such as remote and hybrid laboratories. The model proposes a classification of the failures and its causes in a scale of low, medium and high frequency of occurrence. A definition of a rule based system based on the laboratories constrains is presented. Finally a definition of the integration of the model with the Remote Laboratory Management System (RLMS) is presented.

One of the most challenging problems faced by India in the field of Engineering Education is that most of the graduating engineers are not employable due to lack of practical skills. Practical education is one of the most important aspects in any student’s learning process. Application of theoretical concepts should be taught to students for which laboratories play a prominent role. In this context student have to be taught to utilize laboratories at the first place and build things on their own in order to understand any concept. Our purpose was to design remote labs for digital system design laboratory and make students build them on their own at a very low cost. Digital system design laboratory consists of various basic level experiments like verification of logic gates, full adder, half adder etc. Our goal was to completely structure all the laboratory experiments through remote engineering and build a completely working digital remote lab.

At the Electrical Engineering Faculty of the Universidad de Oriente (UO) in Santiago de Cuba, for the increase and improvement of students’ knowledge in the subject Digital Signal Processing difficulties are detected in the learning of this subject in Biomedical, Telecommunications and Electrical careers in the Faculty, due to the high degree of mathematical theoretical concepts that they require, which has caused lack of motivation in the students and low academic results.The virtual learning environment is a web application developed in the Django framework, written in Python, which respects the design pattern known as Model-View-Controller, as a relational database management system, Sqlite is proposed, due to its speed, reliability and ease of use, multiplatform and multi-user. Using the observer pattern for the management of student activities, through which students can check the progress of the assimilation of the contents in each of the topics of the subject. Two user roles are considered for the system, teachers’ role that is responsible for the management of educational resources, such as topics, videos, questions, or other reference materials, and students’ role, who interact with each of the resources, registering the time and answers to the questions, for a post-top statistical analysis that can be shown to the student or the teacher.

The paper illustrates how 3D LED cube can be used for remote experimenting and for gaining basic programming skills. For this purpose two different realizations of the cube were used. Both of them have 512 (8 × 8 × 8) LEDs and use Arduino motherboard for influencing the behavior of LEDs (their switching on and off).The aim was to control the LED cube remotely. Therefore it is connected to the web server where the supporting web application is placed. The interface for the user is very simple – one text area serves the user for entering the control code.The developed application enables to test own codes and to learn how control loops and conditional commands work. The feedback for user is offered by video channel.

Remote experiments have been frequently used as an effective educational tool by various academic institutions over the last few years. This paper aims to define and illustrate some key features of a particular implementation of an online laboratory management system. More than anything, it focuses on the process of creating and testing a controller and explaining existing approaches provided by this specific online laboratory. Since the system offers a variety of real devices and simulation environments, during the development arose a need to build a generalized and user-friendly way of creating control algorithms. Teachers and system administrators are able to define robust structures, which students can later use to test their solution without any risk to the devices or the system itself.

The tool named WebLab-Boole-Deusto allows users to design and implement a bit-level combinational digital circuit. This tool helps students during the design process step by step: truth table, K-maps, Boolean minimization, Boolean expressions, and digital circuit. Also, students can access a remote lab for implementing and testing the system designed by themselves. The remote lab is FPGA-based and it is included in the WebLab-Deusto RMLS (Remote Lab Management System). WebLab-Boole-Deusto is a web tool. Users access a web page instead of installing software on their computer (desktop application). This feature promotes its dissemination to universities and training centers.

Learning Analytics is an emerging field focused on analyzing learners’ interactions with educational content. One of the key open issues in learning analytics is the standardization of the data collected. This is a particularly challenging issue in online laboratories. This paper presents an implementation with one of the most promising specifications: Experience API (xAPI). The Experience API relies on Communities of Practice developing profiles that cover different use cases in specific domains. This paper presents the Online Laboratories xAPI Profile: a profile developed to align with the most common use cases in the online laboratories domain. The profile is applied to a case study (a windmill lab), which explores the technical practicalities of standardizing data acquisition. In summary, the paper presents a framework to track online laboratories and their implementation with the xAPI specification.

Educational setup for demonstration of a pump operation and determination of full performance curves is presented. The upgrade of the setup has been done in order to implement electronic measurements, data acquisition, computer control, and for preparation of all necessary hardware elements for remote operation via Internet. Used equipment, rationale behind, characteristics and possibilities of the current status of the setup is discussed in detail.

The paper describes the remote experiment “Radiation Remote Laboratory” with two levels diagnostic system, built on ISES - Internet School Experimental System, accessible across the Internet and provided via the system REMLABNET (http://www.remlabnet.eu/). The remote experiment strives to provide the basic knowledge on γ radioactivity and/or γ radiation and its basic application laws, and parameters like its Poisson distribution, intensity dependence on distance from the point source and provides basic ideas about its absorption in various materials. Absorption in Cu on thickness of the Cu material is possible to examine in detail. Besides, this experiment serves to develop the basic knowledge for handling the radioactive materials in education and practice.

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are widely used for industrial control applications. Developing programming skills with these devices is essential for students of electrical engineering, and also for professionals wanting to learn new skills. Whilst programming is performed using software development tools, it is essential that learners have access to real hardware to test these programs in a realistic context. This paper introduces a PLC laboratory architecture and discusses how the experiment is integrated into two existing remote laboratory environments, namely GOLDi (Grid of Online Lab Devices Ilmenau) and RALfie (Remote Access Laboratories for Fun, Innovation and Education). The different approaches are compared in detail.

Defending networks against cyber attacks is often reactive rather than proactive. Attacks against enterprises are often monetary driven and are targeted to compromise data. While the best practices in enterprise-level cyber security of IT infrastructures are well established, the same cannot be said for critical infrastructures that exist in the manufacturing industry. Often guided by these best practices, manufacturing enterprises apply blanket cyber security in order to protect their networks, resulting in either under or over protection. In addition, these networks comprise heterogeneous entities such as machinery, control systems, digital twins and interfaces to the external supply chain making them susceptible to cyber attacks that cripple the manufacturing enterprise. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse, comprehend and quantify the essential metrics of providing targeted and optimised cyber security for manufacturing enterprises. This paper presents a novel data-driven approach to develop the essential metrics, namely, Damage Index (DI) and Vulnerability Index (VI) that quantify the extent of damage a manufacturing enterprise could suffer due to a cyber attack and the vulnerabilities of the heterogeneous entities within the enterprise respectively. A use case for computing the metrics is also demonstrated. This work builds a strong foundation for development of an adaptive cyber security architecture with optimal use of IT resources for manufacturing enterprises.

Industry needs the talents who have the knowledge of OT (Operational Technology) security and ICT security and the skill of OT security and ICT security to change the current situation. KOSEN (National Institute of Technology, Japan) has the potential which can change this situation. We attempted to educate OT security for KOSEN students using KIPS (Kaspersky Industrial Protection Simulation) for confirming effect of using gamification theory. And we also examined next issue from that result. We confirmed the security educational effectiveness using two versions of KIPS to get our student’s awareness to OT security. We also confirmed that validity of tactics using KIPS. Furthermore, we find out that potential of our original contents which can learn ICT security knowledge to utilize in OT security. We have future works which we need to reconsider our contents so that it will influence the KIPS score in a proper manner. At the same time, we have to develop the new educational contents which have the property that KOSEN students can learn the basic of OT security as a preliminary learning contents and the property that has global learning with basic OT security and basic ICT security. And it is ideal that we can use it for a number of engineering educational things. We keep examining the method to apply our educational tactics and we will try to foster a talent who can be active in various fields of industry.

The term learning factory covers a variety of learning environments. Each implementation of a learning factory looks differently and is used for a different purpose. This paper presents a framework for the development of a learning factory that uses Industry 4.0 technologies and has a strong experiential learning approach. This learning factory is used for training students and employees, and for conducting applied research. The facility provides modern design, prototyping, and manufacturing processes that incorporate Internet of Things, Industrial Internet of Things, and Industry 4.0 technologies. The learning factory also provides opportunities for partnerships where students design and implement projects that foster industry-student-faculty collaboration. This collaboration is expected to culminate in an environment that creates a world-class engineer impacting the adoption of new technologies at a faster pace.

Effective and efficient structural monitoring of bridges is an important factor in ensuring a safe transportation system. In this effort this paper presents the design development and implementation of a cloud based laboratory scale bridge monitoring system that can assist the management for real-time monitoring. Accelerometers are used to collect the vibration data and then passed to the cloud after some initial processing through an embedded system. The cloud server as well as a local server are used for further data analysis and web presentation for remoter user.

Embedded Linux devices are very popular today and due their simple implementation they have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. Manufactures provide firmware updates online to enhance software security and quality of their products. In this context, software updates and firmware versions represent an enormous potential for security analysts to perform vulnerability analyses, because no real device is needed to gain valuable insights into systems. Previous solutions show the enormous advantages of automatically performing vulnerability research, but do not correlate program versions with ‘Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures’ (CVE) entries. Our solution provides a remote debugging interface to analyse extracted programs.Therefore, in this paper we present XOR, an expandable web application framework, which supports the manual reverse engineering process of embedded Linux firmware images. In addition, an internal correlation database offers valuable insights for further research. XOR features detect system services, provides a remote debugging interface and allow the correlation between program version and CVE entries. We analysed 47 firmware images of 20 different vendors and found 487 related CVE entries.

The novelty of the presented research is the combination of two modern breakthrough technologies in the field of network organization and virtualization of its components for managing resources and data flows in software-defined networks based on real-time virtualization of network functions in order to provide the required level of security and maintain a specified quality of service for applications and services of multi-cloud platforms located in virtual data centers. The task of describing firewall rules and the rules for selecting nodes of the physical infrastructure for the placement of security elements built on the basis of virtualization technology for network functions in the software-driven infrastructure of the multi-cloud platform will be solved using Data Mining methods. For algorithmic implementation of the data flow management functionalities, the system approach, methods of data mining and cluster approach are used.

The rapid development of cloud and mobile technologies, as well as the Internet of things and telematics, poses new challenges in the field of safety and cybersecurity of Smart House Systems. Of course, such technologies help to organize data storage, convenient interaction with Smart House services, remote surveillance and device monitoring effectively. At the same time, the usage of such solutions can become a factor that significantly reduces the safety and cybersecurity of the Smart House systems.Therefore, the vulnerabilities of modern Smart House systems, that can lead to serious problems, both financial and related to people’s health and life are presented in this work. As well as, the methods of the level of safety and cybersecurity increasing for such systems are discussed.The usage of Remote Lab Smart House & IoT for investigation of the issues of Smart House systems power efficiency, safety and cybersecurity was offered. The application of FMEA method in the case study of vulnerabilities and faults of Remote Laboratory Smart House & IoT hardware and software was shown. The architecture of Remote Lab Smart House & IoT cyber security was proposed, that can be used for real project of Smart House realization.

In this paper, the role of the human-computer interface for remote, or online, laboratories is considered. The traditional equipment used in such remotely accessed laboratories is based on a desktop or laptop computer with keyboard, mouse and visual display unit (VDU). This is typical for both the client and server side computing. In recent years, tablet PCs (personal computers) and smart phones have enabled remote and mobile access using device touch screen based communications, changing the manner in which the user interacts with the laboratory services. The remote laboratory therefore needs to be set-up in order to allow for different user interaction (input-output) requirements. However, other forms of user-laboratory interaction via alternative human-computer interaction (HCI) devices and approaches could also be accommodated. For example, hand position/motion/gesture control and voice activation are modes of HCI that are of increasing interest, driven in many cases by computer gaming and home automation requirements. To illustrate an alternative user control of the remote experiment, this paper will present an example remote experiment arrangement that uses the Leap Motion controller for hand position, motion and gesture control of laboratory test and measurement equipment.

Remote Laboratories are used to teach a variety of experiment in an online mode. One of the fields of RAL is control systems where various embedded controller or similar devices such as FPGA, PLC and MicroController Units (MCU) are the main focus of teaching and learning. For these experiments, the students upload a program to the device. Once the program is uploaded, it runs on the hardware and the students must verify that the program is running correctly by providing further inputs. This is confirmed is the sensors return the right data according to the proper time response. This paper proposes a visual tool in the form a coloring scheme for a virtual model in a 3D virtual environment to aid the students in understanding the changes in the rig with a virtual “twin” of the real rig in the virtual world. The sensor data is streamed to the client user interface from the experiment site and the client-side virtual rig model aligns with its real remote counterpart. The main challenges are the timing issues when the rate of change in data is fast such that it is difficult to determine the changing values. The sensor data is proceeded to find their derivatives and is checked for a minimum threshold. The resulting system allows for greater visualization and ease of understanding of the data.

The usage of Game-Based Learning in engineering education, especially games and simulations to foster students interest and motivation, has been gaining attention by researchers. The present study has as main objective to explore possibilities of application of Process Mining techniques in the analysis of interactions among players, and the involved decision taking processes, in non-digital games. The analysis was applied to board games and to interactive remote experiments enhanced with ludic elements (remote games, as long as the game structure keeps similarity with board games). Activity logs collected during both board and remote game sessions were analyzed through process mining techniques available in ProM 5.2 software. From results, positive hypothesis were established regarding the applicability of process mining in finding behavior patterns presented by students playing educational games.

Nowadays all pupils have easy access to different kinds of educational games that use images, sound and video. Despite the rapid development of computer technology the blind children meet a great restrictions with access to this type of content. The main reason may be that the producers do not perform accessibility requirements by their games. Otherwise, it is not cost-effective to create specifically tailored multimedia learning materials for the blind.Then there is a great need to better sharing of multimedia educational content for this group of users. In this paper, an approach consisting in the replacement of images and video in usual educational game through a combination of audio recordings, synthetic speech, sound signals, electronic Braille, and convex graphics is proposed. An example of such interfaces was implemented as an educational audio game European Encyclopedia of Geography for the Blind that was developed for commercial sale.

This paper presents details design and considerations to pilot an educational virtual environment (VE) development. The environment is designed for Freshman engineering students to achieve learning objectives regarding (1) engineering model understanding and prediction, and (2) experimental setup in the context of environmental education. Human computer interaction (HCI) methods are used to inform the design of the virtual environment of the existing physical site through user task analysis. Environmental data is displayed to exhibit the inverse relationship between two water quality parameters to the students. The virtual environment is provided through the use of a smart phone based head-worn display (HWD). Students reported being distracted, which are mostly due to hardware constraints (n = 14).

School Without Walls (SWW) is one of the novelties of the Iscol@ project - Line B2, conceived to address school disaffection in Sardinia, Italy. Lab. activities are based on, but not limited to, the use of mobile devices, Augmented Reality (AR) and georeferenced maps. Such technologies are used to create educational scenarios that connect what is being seen in real life to school curricula. All scenarios (geolocated data and related queries) are meant to be shared and reused through a Web platform. It will be possible to adapt existing content to different geographical sites by simply changing and/or setting the new coordinates, edit text and data to match the new location. The educational content and geopoints will be created by teachers and students on the Web platform, and scenarios will be accessed through a mobile App. Living technological enriched experiences at and outside school will contribute to a greater school-student retention. This paper describes the context and general objectives of this Lab. activity, which is to start at the beginning of 2018.

In this article, the open-source Node-RED framework is considered as a low-cost, open-source automation system for education and research. It can be used not only to demonstrate and experiment with automation principles, but the open concept of the framework also allows customizations of the different components of the automation system.Thanks to its shallow learning curve, good availability and a strong online community, this platform is very well suited for different education levels, from secondary school to universities. This paper will describe the different possible applications in education.

In this project, a pre-trained, python based deep learning algorithm for recognition of the emotional expression of a face on an image is used, to be accessed and executed in an online experiment. Therefore, newest web technologies are used, to get access to the front camera of the used device, to extract a picture of the face out of a continuous video stream. When the deep learning algorithm has finished its operation of detecting the emotions of the face, the results will then be displayed on the website.

The blind people encounters great difficulties with independent movement in unknown environment. However, navigation in open outside space is partially supported due to their ability to hear of sound reflected from obstacles, therefore movement across the unknown areas of public buildings is even harder. There are also various helping systems i.e. inbuilt physical items, such as the metal paths leading to important places or round protrusions are applied. But the installation of such support is usually too expensive. Therefore it is a great need of easier electronic supporting of navigation of blind people in public buildings. In this paper, a concept of specially developed hierarchical object map ontology is proposed. All objects in this ontology can be physically labeled by radio labels (i.e. bluetooth) and have description of their characteristic features such as their attributes and relationships. Due to this, the routes between two any objects will be easy to create.

The purpose of this work is to add a new feature to bench-type conventional instruments used in Electrical and Electronics Engineering Laboratory which do not have any voice recognition and wireless communication technology. By this way, the user can control these instruments/devices remotely with voice commands and also monitor the results/values in graphical or numerical/text format as well over a mobile device screen. The only limitation is that such instruments should have a driver supported by any software such as NI LabVIEW and a PC connectivity interface such as USB, GPIB or LXI (LAN extensions for Instrumentation). Controlling the instruments (such as oscilloscope or signal generators which are frequently used for training purposes and whose functions are manually set) over a mobile device with voice commands will make life easier for disabled students who especially have difficulties in using their hands.

This paper intends to present review aspects of our recent developments in the area of biodevices, nano-structures, organic compounds and integration techniques. Some simulation techniques accompany the hardware products or depict some virtual tools frequently exploited during the design stage. The main results reefer to TiO₂ nanostructures used to improve the enzyme adherence in biosensors, planar Nothing On Insulator nano-devices simulation, nano-particles application in biofabrication, besides to organic semiconductors in conjunction with bio-receptor integration for pesticide or glucose detection.

Infrared thermography is an imaging modality that is able to map the surface skin temperature and has been widely researched and applied in biomedical applications. It can be used as a monitoring method for upper limb condition support diagnosis and treatment assessment. The aim of this research is the development of an image processing method for rapid analysis of forearm thermographic images. The images were taken from 13 participants who undergone in a handgrip force exercise using a FLIR A325sc thermal camera. The obtained images were analyzed with FLIR ThermaCAM Researcher Pro 2.10 software package, and by a customer developed program in Matlab 2016b. Three regions of interest (ROI) were defined for both analysis. At the Matlab developed application, the forearm was segmented from the background and the ROIs placed automatically and average temperature and standard deviation were extracted. The results from both analysis were compared and showed good correlations for the examined 1365 images. The Matlab developed analysis is much faster than the time-consuming analysis performed using the standard camera manufacturer provided tool, however the first has to be used to export the temperature matrix from the proprietary image format in order to be used by the Matlab developed program. The development of a reliable tool for automated thermographic analysis of the forearms ROIs was successful implemented. For further work, it is proposed to read directly from the raw thermal images proprietary formats to hasten the analysis.

This work contributes to the development of a repeatable and objective methodology for relating the physiological energy spent during a handgrip exercise, identified through the variation of skin temperature, with the average grip force, and evaluate its influence on exercise endurance and handedness dominance. For that purpose, a special handgrip dynamometer is used as well as an Infrared Thermal Imaging (IRT) to map large areas of skin surface temperature. Results suggest that at least a 10-grips test with the dynamometer is required to produce reliable thermal results and the dominant hand should be used. In the future, relationship between the thermal variables and mechanical work involved during the handgrip should be addressed. The developed methodology should be applied to populations at health risk conditions to which the use of the handgrip dynamometer can provide information for diagnose and treatment assessment.

There are several teaching methods adopted in today’s engineering faculties. The traditional teaching-learning style with frontal lessons has proven to be more useful for theoretical aspects. When practice comes to play, laboratories and hands-on sessions are more effective on learning outcomes. Considering the computer engineering faculty, the “learning by doing” paradigm can be supported by the “learning by practice” and “learning by competing” approaches, by stimulating innovation and creative thinking and by developing experience in teamwork and project execution. In this paper, in the context of the project work associated to our computer engineering master degree course, we propose three case studies, parts of eHealth research projects currently under development and testing at our University in Southern Italy, each one characterized by specific constraints and issues to be addressed in order to find innovative solutions to such problems. These research activities are aimed at demonstrating how “healthy competition”, mainly based on team collaboration and cooperation, in project-based learning can be profitably deployed and exploited in computer engineering classes.

Since more fifteen years a multidisciplinary and scientific collaboration between Group of Speech Processing (GSP) from Universidad de Oriente and the Medical Consultation for Infant Neurodevelopment and Disability (CPNDI) of Santiago de Cuba have been successfully developed. Notwithstanding the successes and advances of the CPNDI, certain difficulties limit its action and impact as: non automation of the information flow related to the study of neurodevelopment and children’s disability, the delayed detection of some cases of infants who then make their debut with deviations in their neurodevelopment and associated disabilities. Currently, a project is being developed to deploy a Management Computer System of the CPNDI (named PMSIND). This web-based system will need another support system that will allow it to incorporate software packages and diagnostic methodology both linked to the infant cry analysis, which will facilitate an early detection of neonates at risk to be treated later by the CPNDI. The main objective of the paper is the development and implementation of this support system made up of non-proprietary software tool. The support system developed by the authors should not only help to manage the clinical information of the neonate at risk, but also must guarantee the availability of all information with diagnostic value from the Infant Crying Analysis that facilitates the early detection of infants at risk to be followed up by the CPNDI.

Some cardiovascular diseases (CVD) can be characterized by abnormalities in the blood pressure (BP) waveform. This work explores the use of ML techniques in a screening system currently under development for detection of BP waveform abnormalities - Bisferiens and Alternans pulses. The system uses a tonometric probe for signal acquisition, signal processing involving period segmentation and image processing, and classification. The classification method used was the support vector machine (SVM) and it achieved an accuracy of 99.84%. Signal acquisition is done locally and sent to a remote server where the signal and image processing and classification is performed and the result prediction is sent back to the user.

With the rapid development of mobile devices, Augmented Reality (AR) contents on the mobile are available and could be integrated with the course easily. Previous studies have shown that the integrating of Augmented Reality in the math courses would take more positive attitude of students, and the Augmented Reality could help students in learning some concepts which were not easy to understand in the courses. In this study, an Augmented Reality based mobile application running on tablet was developed and integrated into the solid geometry class in a junior high school to help students in three-dimensional geometry learning. Pre- and post-test were taken, the purpose of the current study is to learn about the effect of AR-based learning application and the students’ attitudes and satisfaction to this application. The results show that Augmented Reality could make students’ learning gains better in the traditional mathematics class, and students in junior high school are willing to study through this way.

The main objective of the research presented in this paper is to provide developers of virtual, remote, and mixed laboratories with the powerful instrument for data representation. The data sets are supposed to have multimodal nature. Three models for multimodal data representation are presented and discussed in the paper. These models are the Muxel Model, the Multilevel Ontological Model, and the Spatio-Temporal Linked Model. The use of these models for implementation of different types of laboratories is discussed as well.

The first generation of affordable consumer virtual reality headsets and related peripherals are now available. Question-Answering (QA) systems and speech recognition/synthesis has improved dramatically over the last decade. Virtual assistants, based on speech-based services are growing in popularity and can be used in a range of diverse application areas. This paper explores the practical use of virtual reality, IOT and voice driven virtual assistants in remote laboratories to facilitate visualization of electrical phenomena and to tutor students; guiding them through each stage of an experiment; presenting supplementary teaching resources when requested; accessing, controlling and configuring instrumentation and hardware and providing feedback with summative and formative assessment. The re-purposing of existing teaching material for use in an immersive environment with a virtual assistant is shown and the limitations and opportunities offered by the approach taken and the technologies used are discussed. The process of integrating test instrumentation, the board under test, a switching matrix and additional teaching resources into virtual reality using IOT with the inclusion of virtual assistants is described. Two case studies of practical working examples of remote laboratories in virtual reality with a virtual assistant tutor are demonstrated and the viability and long-term opportunities for the use of virtual reality and virtual assistants in the context discussed.

Constructing augmented reality systems for remote access laboratory environments may seem daunting to many institutions. Utilizing open source tools may benefit from the large user and developer base, providing advice and support. Platforms such as Unity 3D provide comprehensive resources to developers when deciding how to construct a working framework, such as 3D graphic rendering, audio generation with built-in software tools. Comprehensive computer vision tools written with Unity 3D’s C# or JavaScript compiler provide developers with the necessary Augmented Reality interfaces and feedback. This work discusses the Unity 3D framework, and the methods required to construct functional augmented reality support for remote access laboratories.

Mixed Reality is defined as a combination of Reality, Augmented Reality, Augmented Virtuality and Virtual Reality. This innovative technology can aid with the transition between these stages. The enhancement of reality with synthetic images allows us to perform tasks more easily, such as the collaboration between people who are at different locations. Collaborative manufacturing, assembly tasks or education can be conducted remotely, even if the collaborators do not physically meet. This paper reviews both past and recent research, identifies benefits and limitations, and extracts design guidelines for the creation of collaborative Mixed Reality applications in technical settings.

Our recent research in remote laboratory management systems (REMLABNET—www.remlabnet.eu) deals with questions such as how to make the user experience stronger and how to help users understand complex phenomena behind remote experiments and the laws of physics governing the experiment. At our current stage of technological development, we have both sufficiently powerful hardware and software to create an impressive virtual user interface which could be a help to this mission. An extended mixed reality taxonomy for remote physical experiments was proposed to identify goals of the future REMLABNET research and development. The first part of this paper describes classes of taxonomy and reasons why they were set up in this way. The second part mentions the chosen method of our research and our current progress.

This paper considers a learning process in which the student teaches the robot new tasks, such as lifting unknown weights, via reinforcement learning procedure. Using CAD software, we ran virtual trials using the robot’s digital twin in place of physical robot trials. When performing the task, the robot measures and sends the value of the weight to an IoT controller implemented on the ThingWorx platform and receives parameters of the optimal posture found through the virtual trials. When we presented the robot learning process to high school students they had difficulty fully understanding the robot’s dynamics and selection of posture parameters. To address this difficulty, we developed an augmented reality interface which allows students to visualize robot postures on the digital twin and monitor the change in parameters (such as the center of gravity) measured by virtual sensors. The student can select a weightlifting posture and control the robot to implement it.

The goal of the presented approach is to show a method suitable for better integration of real-time sensor data into practical education, without leaving the students to sort out the digital content by themselves. The authors want to empower teachers on-site to show their students relevant sensory data, effectively controlling the content the students can use and explore themselves. The students are enabled to find individual approaches towards the learning scenario, take different perspectives of the plant into account and try several virtual steps before the experiment is undertaken by themselves. The two main functions of the presented framework are the authoring of augmented reality content and controlling the augmented reality content of the student’s smart devices via the teacher’s master view. The authors created a simple setup phase, which is usable on-site, utilizing only one device in the master view mode. For students, the usage is even simpler, as their content is controlled via the master view. The framework technically supports an unlimited number of student clients to be controlled by one teacher view. The functionality has been established and validated with two experimental setups, both situated within the context of chemical engineering education.

Gamification and Augmented Reality techniques, in recent years, have tackled many subjects and environments. Its implementation can, in particular, strengthen teaching and learning processes in schools and universities. Therefore, new forms of knowledge, based on interactions with objects, contributing game, experimentation and collaborative work. Through the technologies mentioned above, we intend to develop an application that serves as a didactic tool, giving support in the area of Computer Networks. This application aims to stand out in simulated controlled environments to create computer networks, taking into account the necessary physical devices and the different physical and logical topologies. The main goal is to enrich the students’ learning experiences and contribute to teacher-student interaction, through collaborative learning provided by the tool, minimizing the need for expensive equipment in learning environments.

Learning styles are defined as a characteristic feature that determines cognitive and psychosocial behavior of learners, perceiving of knowledge, interaction and processing of information in different learning environments. Applying learning style theories in pedagogic concept has brought multiple dimensions in categorizing learning strategies, although such studies on laboratory skill education are limited. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model, has been widely accepted as an efficient pedagogical model of learning. In this paper, we explore the pedagogical basis for designing life sciences laboratory education and applying Kolb’s learning style inventory for classifying learners into different categories. In the context of bioscience laboratory education, most students learners were reflective observers or assimilators (60%) or divergers (20%) and hence seemed most apt for virtual laboratory based education due to acclivity to standard demonstrations and lectures. Only 20% were convergers or accommodators. Unlike in some engineering students, this classification suggests bioscience laboratory education may be complemented using web-based tools and will need better assessments and virtualization methods.

Our deal is to present a VET Methodology to Industry 4.0. A VET Methodology that privileges the pedagogical strategies focused on the development of students’ competences. We emphasize the required competences for an Industrial Revolution. This is implies not only understanding how the workers can to interact with the machines, equipment and systems, but also identifying which are the technical, social and methodological competences necessary to training people who will interact in these innovative environments. But it is not enough knowing which skills should be taught, but mainly having clear how such skills should be taught and acquired by the students to be applied to the Industry 4.0.

The move from conventional to digital libraries isn’t just a technological development, it requires an adjustment in the worldview by which people access and connect with data. The main aim of this paper is to study the students’ perception of e-library system at Fujairah University, UAE. A questionnaire was conducted of close-ended questions that was distributed to random sample students at Fujairah University, UAE. A simple random sample of 75 students were chosen randomly sample from a larger population to study the students’ perception of the e-library system at Fujairah University.

This paper describes the cloud system for collective access (CSCA) to virtual working environments as a means of providing an economically profitable remote access to paid and free software for educational institutions of secondary education. The problem of efficient CSCA scheduling to optimize the usage of virtual working environments and software licenses has been studied in details. The mathematical model of cloud system resources control is presented. The statistical analysis of fitness function value distribution is performed.

A platform dedicated to the problems of engineering education (EngEdu) has been established by European Council of Academies of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering (Euro-CASE). The renewed working group (WG) of this EngEdu Platform started to work in Sept. 2017 and now tries to establish a direct link with REV conference participants and organizers, and disseminate and exchange ideas and results. Current topics of interest are presented as well as one of the projects going on.

Numerous students attend courses in hydraulic turbo pumps at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering University of Belgrade, as well as from other faculties. They have oral lectures and exercises with numerical tasks, but also laboratory exercises. This easily driven upgraded installation is very convenient for laboratory exercises for various groups of students. In this paper is demonstrated upgrade of the present installation with transducers instead of U-tube analogue manometers, acquisition system and LabVIEW application for hydraulic pump diagnostics and flow meter calibration. Pressure transducers are also previously calibrated. This installation has three regulating valves and two for tanks emptying. In this way students could form two simple and one complex pipeline. Serious and parallel combinations of pipe lines could be demonstrated, as well as pump by-pass regulation. Hydraulic pipe curve could be formed for one position of the valve on the pump pressure side and various pump frequencies. This could be repeated for other valve positions. In addition pump head characteristic for one rotation number is formed by changing the valve position. Good overlapping with manufacturer’s curve is demonstrated. Cavitation and turbulent swirling flow phenomena could be also visualized and demonstrated on this installation with transparent pump housing, as well as partly suction and pressure pipes.

In a country with a growing population of over 1.2 billion and over 1.7 million engineers graduating every year, it becomes more imperative to have new methods of smart education and which are scalable across the masses. This paper discusses about the need for remote labs in Indian context and identifies the key parameters that determine their growth.Preliminary reports of different remote labs in India, across all disciplines are tabulated. Their impact is measured both qualitatively and quantitatively through described parameters and their relative effectiveness and is measured. The cost of remote labs, their technology and cost are compared and contrasted with one another thus establishing the key factors for its success and impact. Outcomes of the preliminary tests show that remote labs in colleges with high student to machine equipment ratio has the highest impact. From normal per student average lab time of 3 h/week, the touch time has increased to over 10.5 h/week. The concept has resounded very well in rural areas where there are learning centers being established to connect with labs thousands of kilometers away.It is clearly evident that remote labs are both a necessity and highly impactful in the Indian context with outcomes exceeding the expectations. Authors’ feel with right approach and execution; smart education can be provided to millions of students in Indian Academia.

Nowadays, the development of the cloud systems for collective access to virtual working environments, software, virtual stands and laboratories is very actual. Typically, such systems are created based on virtual machines (IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service), which provide remote access to their resources (including access to desktops). In the case of a large number of cloud system users it is necessary to store a large number of virtual machine disk images with various installed software. But it requires significant financial costs, when public cloud providers are used. In this study it is proposed to build disk images automatically and store them for a short time.

This work in progress describes the ongoing initiative at CUAS to use Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for educational purposes. First, it describes the relevance of Internet of Things technologies in education, next it focuses on different hardware platforms used by CUAS. The main part describes the implementation of one specific example developed by students, the MIA-project. Finally, it gives an outlook on how future student projects will benefit from the lessons learned.

The use of collaborative tools that can contribute to share and demonstrate the usage of remote experiments, to support teaching and to enhance the learning process, is of great importance in several educational contexts and particularly in engineering courses. Jupyter/IPython notebooks are one of these tools that provide a programming environment to develop and share scientific contents and that can promote the access to remote and virtual labs. Teaching and learning activities in different high education courses, especially in engineering subjects, can benefit of using this type of resources. This paper presents an IPython-based approach to show how to interact with a remote rain gauge to obtain data about the rainfall in a given location, which may be useful in different learning contexts, namely in programming or environmental science subjects.

For many years now we used in our Creativity Laboratory and Cypress – National Instruments club Virtual Instrumentation technologies. With all the new hardware’s and software’s appeared technologies we try to build one easy scenario to use them starting from Highs Schools Children’s, extend to the students and maybe to suggest industrials how fast they can use it and implement in industrial application. Thanks to our collaboration with “Bergmans Mechatronics LLC” we implemented step by step remote controlled laboratories using their LabSocket solution and now we do the same with their LabSocket-E.

Sustainable use of energy and raising public awareness related to this issue is one of the most important priorities of the local communities all over Europe. Cities are consuming 80% of energy in the world, that is why focus on promoting and investing in energy efficiency (EE) of the city, investing in renewable energy sources (RES) and smart management solutions are essential for the sustainable development of smart cities. There is often a low level of awareness about measures for rational use of energy and energy efficiency among citizens in local communities, given the low energy efficiency in the production, distribution and consumption of energy in all sectors. Education and raising awareness of young citizens, therefore, play a key role in understanding why it is necessary to act locally and what can be done by individuals. In this context, this paper presents planned research activities related to raising awareness and positive attitudes among young citizens towards using RES and increasing EE in the local community within the scientific and technological cooperation between the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Čačak, University of Kragujevac in Serbia and the School of Engineering and IT, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Austria. Smart applications that can be used for raising awareness of young citizens towards using RES and increasing EE in the local community, such as online experiments (remote and virtual) with learning outcomes related to RES and EE and online monitoring of energy consumption and RES potential in the local community, are described in this paper. Also, developing of an innovative web-based platform targeted for improving energy efficiency and possibilities of using RES through consumer understanding, engagement and behavioral changes, which would be of use to the local authority in the energy sector, is proposed.