Scaling up the Lab: An Adaptable and Scalable Architecture for Embedded Systems Remote Labs

Upgraded embedded systems and technologies are continuously appearing. Remote laboratories are an ever more promising technology that educators can use to train their students. However, they are still costly to develop and maintain. Most software and hardware architectures are tailored to specific hardware boards, and little can be reused when a laboratory for a different board is to be created. This paper proposes a novel remote laboratory architecture. It is specifically designed to support a wide range of embedded systems, so that laboratories for new or upgraded ones can be implemented and deployed easily and efficiently. In order to propose an appropriate architecture, some of the most significant deployed remote laboratories for embedded systems education are first analyzed, and the key design requirements are determined. In order to evaluate it, a new microcontroller-oriented remote laboratory that implements it has been created. Results suggest that the proposed architecture does indeed meet the requirements and that it is a step towards more cost-efficient and reusable remote laboratory architectures.