Power Engineering and Motion Control Web Laboratory: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Mechatronics Course

During the E-learning Distance Interactive Practical Education project, 13 partners from 11 European countries joined together to build a power engineering and motion control remote laboratory, which would offer 18 complete online courses with remote experiments and high-quality documentation, to students from the universities of all participating partners. The major benefit of this project is the possibility of sharing expensive equipment and lessening the burdens of technical and organizational problems. This paper outlines the project´s goals, organization, and, as an example, realization of one of the project´s modules. The described module is a mechatronics motion control course, which explains the most important aspects of motion control design, from modeling, simulations, control design, experimental validation, and comparison between various controllers. The technical solutions, educational strategy, and realization details are given for the module. The pilot testing of the module was performed to assess the module and find out what the students´ personal attitude concerning e-learning and remote experiments. The results of testing are presented and discussed.