Mixed reality with hyper-bonds—A means for remote labs

The paper presents a learning environment where on-site and remote components merge into a cooperative learning process. The envisaged system allows working together with complex real and virtual systems, consisting of parts which may be remotely distributed. The learning environment includes a supportive web-database with multimedia learning sequences providing theoretical background information, exercises and help to handle training tasks. Hardware equipment can be connected to the virtual environment with a special bi-directional sensor-actor coupling called hyper-bond. The learning environment smoothly integrates equipment and supports full hardware-in-the-loop functionality, allowing building up real systems from subsystems of complex virtual systems.