Implementation of Laboratory At Distance (LAD): Specific considerations and recommendations Radhi MHIRI 1 , Mongi BESBES 2 , Maarouf SAAD 1 , Vahé NERGUIZIAN 1 and Houda BEN ATTIA 2 Electrical Engineering Department 1 École de technologie supérieure Montreal, Canada radhi.mhiri@etsmtl.ca 2 Ecole supérieure de technologie et de l’informatique Tunis, Tunisia Abstract— The laboratory of a course is considered as a fundamental part of the education and training for engineers and scientists. Remote laboratories are increasingly finding their way into a variety of disciplines. Development and operation of remote laboratory work are specific process in several dimensions (technological, pedagogical, organizational, etc.). We present in this article some typical characteristics of this process. We will limit ourselves to consider the specificities related to communication between the remote user and the laboratory equipment. We will consider also the problems related to planning and access control and we will highlight aspects related to safety and the initialization of the state of a bench for a new experiment starting at distance. In the second part of this article we will discuss some challenges and opportunities that accompany the development of remote laboratories. This paper does not pretend to be exhaustive, but is based on real experiences that the authors have lived through a collaborative project between ETS and three national colleges (CEGEP) for the development of Lab At Distance (LAD). Another project is developed using Lab@home approach as part of ‘Fonds de développement académique du réseau’ (FODAR) of University of Quebec. These experiments were realized in collaboration with national colleges in Quebec and also in collaboration with international universities in Tunisia and United Arab Emirates. Index Terms— lab at distance, Lab@home, online laboratory, remote laboratory, pedagogical approach, Information and Communications Technology (ICT). I. INTRODUCTION The remote laboratory is a concept that tends to spread into science and engineering courses at different levels. Development of remote laboratory is introduced in different ways; an interesting example can be cited with the approach taken by MIT to develop the online iLab laboratory. ‘’The iLab Project is dedicated to the proposition that online laboratories - real laboratories accessed through the Internet - can enrich science and engineering education by greatly expanding the range of experiments that the students are exposed to in the course of their education’’ https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/ilab2/home. From the perspective of online laboratory management, experiments in this project fall into three broad categories: Batched experiments, Interactive experiments and Sensor experiments. For Sensor experiments, students get and note information from sensors. At École de technologie supérieure (ETS), we were interested in bringing new approaches for laboratory work in electrical engineering as per the second category or the Interactive experiments. The objective was the introduction to our students to perform remote laboratory work. This would correspond to the second mode of the iLab project. This action has led us to develop two major types of applications. The first type considered remote laboratory work using laboratory equipment installed in the laboratory and connection via the Internet [1]. The second type considered works that could be performed with miniaturized equipment and kit connected to Personal Computer (PC) where the work could be even done from home. This type of work is called Lab@home [2]. Through these experiences we treated a number of problems specific to the use of remote laboratory. We also caught a glimpse of innovative solutions and challenges that could greatly expand the use of remote laboratories and compensate the constraints of this mode type of laboratory. In what follows, we present some key points related to these problems and these ideas and challenges. II. SPECIFIC CONSIDERATIONS A. Communication The delicate issue that always comes up in remote laboratory is the communication between laboratory server and users. Communications at this level must be viewed from two angles. We must consider the technical solutions available and the type of laboratory work we wish to develop. Through our experience we explored communication through different software like Labview, LogMeIn, TeamViewer, Radmin, etc. The mode of communication must also be suited to the nature of work requested and the scenario we want to implement. In some works we ask the students to configure and control software to see the effect of the choice they have made. In this case, students will not need to program software but simply to run an already prepared solution and choose the parameters for this solution. Therefore, using Labview is a very interesting choice [3]. Labview is widely used in Educational Remote Laboratories ＹＷＸＭＱＭＴＷＹＹＭＳＱＸＱＭＱＯＱＳＯＤＳＱＮＰＰ＠ﾩＲＰＱＳ＠ｉｅｅｅ ＵＲ