A Tool for the Automatic Selection of Mechatronics Remote Laboratories based on their Actual Effective Costs

This Research to Practice Work in Progress presents a solution for managing distance learning laboratories. Remote Access Laboratories are software and hardware tools that allow students to remotely operate real equipment located in physical facilities such as universities laboratories. This work presents the development of an Automatic Selection System for Remote Access of Mechatronic Laboratories. The system checks the current laboratory activities in real time, verifying if it is active, inactive, occupied or free, according to a student’s experiment. After analyzing those characteristics, the system examines the number of students and the state of the internet connection to determine the most appropriate laboratory. Finally, experiments using the selection functions and the proposed architecture are presented to investigate the system’s efficiency.