Deploying Interactive Remote Labs Using the iLab Shared Architecture

James Hardison, MIT - CECIFrontiers in Education, October 22 - 25, 2008

Motivation for the iLab Project Laboratory experiences represent an

enormous educational value Remote labs are a good complement to hands-on

experiences

But, building a new remote lab from scratch is hard

The iLab Project: Provide a standard architecture that eases the development and sharing of remote laboratories.

A Brief History of the iLab Project

Adoption of ISA increasing worldwide ►

1998: First Individual Labs Developed

2004: iLab Shared Architecture (ISA), Compliant Batched Labs Released

2007: Support for Interactive Experiments Added to ISA

Benefits of the iLab Shared Architecture Provides a set of generic functions, eases development Provides a standard, distributed platform for lab

deployment, eases sharing Enables single sign-on for students who use multiple

iLabs

Batched iLabs allow certain simplifying assumptions: Communication model Execution model

Interactive iLabs are a little more complex…

Supporting Interactive ExperimentsInteractive experiments, by their nature… …require real-time control.

Direct client to lab server connection needed (possibly high-bandwidth, possibly

proprietary)

…are performed in human-time.Longer periods of single user control

A revision to the iLab Shared Architecture was necessary to provide services for interactive experiments.

Topology of Interactive Experiments in the iLab Shared Architecture

iLab Service Broker orchestrates access to a set of distributed, stand-alone services for…

Experiment Storage Scheduling Cross-service

authentication (Ticketing)

Service Broker sets up the experiment session and then steps out of the way.

The Experiment Storage Service (ESS)A generic stand-alone service responsible storing student experiment information Lab configurations, input parameters, results

Service Brokers, Lab Servers and Clients all interface to an ESS Service Broker responsible

for record management Clients & Lab Servers

contribute to the record

A single ESS may service many iLab installations

Scheduling ServicesUsed to manage student access to the lab. Composed of two complementary services: Lab-side Scheduling Service (LSS)

Allocates available lab time to sets of students.

User-side Scheduling Service (USS) Reserves blocks of

available time for individual student use.

Service Brokers manage connections between USS and LSS pairs

Ticketing Provides a common authorization system for systems in the iLab Shared Architecture, based on the following ideas: Service Brokers authenticate users and can permit

access to ISA resources by issuing Tickets. Agents seeking access receive only a pointer

to the Ticket (Coupon). Only issuing and redeeming

agents are able to access Ticket information.

Ticketing is used to manage access to all ISA systems.

Developing Interactive Labs for the ISA By design, few technical constraints are placed on

lab development Labs can have drastically different requirements One size does not fit all

LabVIEW Integrated Interactive Lab Server (LVIILS) Provides a toolkit for building a LabVIEW based lab

using the ISA Enables LabVIEW VIs to take full advantage of ISA

services Existing VI can be converted to an iLab in a matter of

hours

Development on other platforms follows similar path to that of the LVIILS

Deployed Interactive iLabs:Force on a Dipole

Enables students to observe the behavior of a magnet suspended by a spring between a Helmholtz coil Targeted to freshmen Physics

students at MIT

Built using LabVIEW and LVIILS

Successful test deployment Spring 2008, full scale deployment (~600 students) this Spring.

Deployed Interactive iLabs:Nuclear Reactor

Exposes some functionality of the MIT Nuclear Research Reactor A variety of experiments

are available in the iLab

Also built using LabVIEW

To be used in MIT Nuclear Engineering and Physics courses and, eventually, by select secondary schools

Ongoing Work and ConclusionsWhat we’re working on now:

Develop a unified architecture that will support both Batched and Interactive iLabs (recently completed).

Further refine services for Interactive iLabs on the ISA Support development of Interactive iLabs at Project

partner institutions.

In conclusion… The iLab Project has developed a platform to support the

development and deployment of Interactive remote laboratories.

A toolkit has been developed to enable the rapid development of LabVIEW based experiments.

This work will drastically increase the number of iLabs available to students.

For more information, see http://ilab.mit.edu/wiki