Representational fidelity in distributed and remote lab environment

Abstract

Students today lack the real experiences needed to make sense of complex technical concepts although industry is one of the primary customers that constantly challenges academia to make curricula more relevant to professional practice. Our response to these influences was to create and test idea of Distributed and Remote Lab dedicated to active learning. In this survey, the experiments on representational fidelity measures are performed on two types of 'client' user interface (Wall and Window) in two modes of presentation (Desktop and Video beam) of the distributed manufacturing system. The proposed remote system has allowed students from Belgrade, Serbia to dynamically interact with a real manufacturing process held in Minho's Lab, Portugal, to carry out a remote experimental practice. This survey gives advantage to Wall interface, in the fields of smooth display of view changes and object motion and consistency of object behaviour. There are also weaker correlations between representational fidelity measures when Wall interface is used and certain advantage on desktop presentation mode.

Keywords

• distributed and remote lab environment
• representational fidelity
• remote control
• user interface