UDMessenger

Volume 12, Number 4, 2004


Remote control

Virtual engineering lab gives students real laboratory experience

In Jian-Qiao Sun's mechanical engineering lab, students can conduct basic experiments at any hour of the day or night, without ever setting foot in the lab or even on campus.

Sun has taken a traditional lab exercise, in which a student activates a small rotor and collects data about its spin and vibration for later analysis and trouble-shooting, and set it up so that it can be carried out from a remote location. The lab is set up with an overhead video camera that enables students who have logged on to the web site and activated the rotor to view it from their computer monitor. The web site also displays a panel with instruments the students can use to run the experiment online.

"You put sensors in place to gather data and measurements from the rotor, and when you run the experiment, the data comes to you wherever you are," Sun says. That ability has implications for students in locations far from a lab, as well as for researchers who want to conduct experiments far away from their worksites, he says.

Still, Sun says, student convenience is not the goal of his virtual engineering lab.

"The significance is the potential application of this technology to other areas, such as industrial or military uses," he says. "But, even that is not my main purpose. I want my students to learn to design this kind of web-based system themselves."

As information technology has transformed the U.S. manufacturing industry in recent years, mechanical engineers have had to reinvent themselves to stay up to date, Sun says, adding that they now must "cross boundaries" with computer science and other disciplines to keep their skills marketable and globally competitive.

"And, so, we have to find ways to bring new technologies into the curriculum," he says. Adding high-tech components to traditional engineering courses--still essential for students to learn the fundamentals of their field--is the best way to accomplish that goal, Sun says.