Design and Implementation of Web-Based Control Laboratory for Test Rigs in Geographically Diverse Locations

This paper compares current remote laboratories and describes the design and implementation of the Networked Control System Laboratory (NCSLab) in the University of Glamorgan on http://www/ncslab.net, which provides a unified and flexible Web-based interface to access test rigs located in different countries of the world. All the test rigs are connected and managed together by the NCSLab system. They are well cataloged by their characteristics, and their geographical locations are not necessarily known to the users. A three-layer structure, which consists of the main server, subservers, and test rigs, is adopted to organize the distributed facilities. All the control algorithms for the test rigs are generated by using the Matlab Real-time Workshop. Users can design and implement their own control algorithms for the test rigs. The Web interface is designed using Java JSP/Servlet technology which gives the users great flexibility, including remote tuning, remote monitoring (both data and videos), and remote control logics. In order to manage the massive information and support concurrent access, MySQL database is also integrated into the system.