Innovate engineering education by using virtual laboratory platform based industrial robot

Abstract

With the popularization of STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education in the world, more and more universities are paying attention to combination of science and engineering, especially in the field of robotics and automation because of its multidisciplinary characteristic. With respect to the teaching laboratory of real robot, it is insufficient to meet the requirements of students for the limited resources in the laboratories and their opening times. What's more, there are some unknown potential risks in real robot labs which are not conducive to students' normal use. However, some flexible solutions have been developed to permit an effective teaching in the labs of robotics and automation systems. One of these solutions is the virtual laboratory based Web, which is an effective tool to provide the requirements help for hands-on experiment. The proposed platform of the virtual laboratory in this paper has been used to innovate engineering education. The proposed virtual lab covers required knowledge of the robot kinematics and dynamics utilizing MATLAB as programming language. In addition, all projects of the virtual laboratory platform can be further developed besides some designed experimental projects, which means the users can do research based on the virtual laboratory same as the real laboratory. Furthermore, multi-functions of virtual laboratory platform from different perspectives are illustrated in this paper. The virtual laboratory platform has been applied in the department of automation in Beihang university for practical teaching of undergraduates. The results show two advantages of the virtual lab. One is that students learn about the robot knowledge effectively in the virtual lab, the other one is they can use their new ideas to innovate the project development. The proposed virtual laboratory provides an efficient learning platform for combination of science and engineering to innovate education.