Improving user interaction in remote laboratories through HTML5/AJAX

The field of remote and virtual laboratories for automatic control has been developed over the years. Recent technologies make it possible to address common challenges that need to be overcome in order to achieve flexibility, scalability and greater educational value. The client application is a key component of the laboratory, since students need interactivity and feedback. For that reason, in this paper, the joint use of HTML5 and AJAX is proposed to overcome some deficiencies present in the state-of-the-art client application technologies. Besides, a set of methods is proposed to solve usual challenges associated to the remote laboratories and facilitate the development and integration of HTML5-based client applications. The approach is tested with an existing remote laboratory to validate both its performance and the ability to integrate the proposed technology in a fast and easy way.