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The laboratory is located at the Faculty of Infor-
mation Engineering of Sapienza University, in the
premises of Latina, and it can be reached at the web
address http://infocli31.dislt.uniroma1.it/webRobot/,
where at present, due to its current use, only a Ital-
ian language version is available.
The main contribution is related to the particular
software design which gives the possibility of specific
didactic paths construction, tailored on each student
initial skills and desired learning goals.
In the most recent literature, several examples of
web based laboratories are illustrated. As evidenced
in (Garc´ıa–Zubia J., Ordu˜na P., L´opez–de–Ipi˜na D.
and Alves G.R., 2009), the most of them put their
main attention in the hardware aspects, banishing the
software to a little more than a mere communication
interface.
A wide analysis of the state of the art in remote
laboratories is performed in (Gomes L. and Bogosyan
S., 2009), where a first simplified classification of
local/remote and simulated/hands-on experiments is
given, and some benefits are evidenced.
Several applications of virtual and augmented re-
ality have been known to have some didactic usage,
such as in (Kosuge K., Kikuchi J. and Takeo K., 2002;
Mar´ın R., Sanz P.J., Nebot P. and Wirz R., 2005). An
application of remote accessibility of an experimen-
tal lab for student with disabilities is in (Colwell C.,
Scanlon E. and Cooper M., 2002). iLab (Lerman S.
and del Alamo J., 2000-2005) makes accessible labo-
ratories developed at MIT.
Regarding the interaction between remotely avail-
able laboratories and distance learning services,
(Chellali R., Dumas C., Mollet N. and Subileau G.,
2009) laments that the problems, in making complex
systems available through e-learning, are rather con-
ceptual than technical.
(Borgolte U., 2009) presents the architecture of
a remotely operable laboratory with a mobile robot,
used for education. Programming is done in COL-
BERT, offering quasi-parallel execution of activities.
In (Casini M., Prattichizzo D. and Vicino A.,
2004) Automatic Control Telelab is presented, as a
web-based (through java applet technology) system,
allowing to put on-line a series of experiences in vari-
ous fields of automation and control. Students have
access, through the “experiment interface”, to the
graphically and video rendered outputs of the exper-
iment. There are several experimental settings, and
an additional field related to LEGO Mindstorm is an-
nounced.
A survey on Web technologies used in control
systems courses can be found in (Poindexter S. E.
and Heck B. S., 1999), where the authors describe
the use of virtual (Merrick C. M. and Ponton J. W.,
1996; Schmid C., 1998) and remote labs. A distin-
guishing feature of remote labs as compared to vir-
tual labs is that users can interact with real physical
processes through the Internet, making them more at-
tractive than controlling software simulations. At the
same time, the design and implementation of a remote
lab is more challenging due to safety and fault toler-
ant aspects.
In (Jara C. A., Candelas F. A. and Torres F., 2008)
an environment for remote operation and simulation
for a robot arm is described. It uses easy java simula-
tion for the applet-based graphical interface, making
it necessary on the local PC only a web browser and
java+java3D runtime system. A dedicated and expen-
sive robot is made available.
(L´opez D., Cedazo R., S´anchez F.M. and Sebas-
tian J.M., 2009) describes a web accessible exper-
imental setup for embedded real time systems pro-
gramming for a robot arm. Free software is used both
for client and for server applications. The hardware
setup is fixed and the different sessions propose dif-
ferent tasks to be executed by the robot arm; the tested
skill is the ability of produce a correct and functional
program for executing the given task.
The here presented remote laboratory, MindLab,
has been designed and built up focusing on the possi-
bility of a quite flexible and configurable exercise set-
tings, where three main components - configurations
of robots, experiment areas, exercises definitions - of
the remote learning activities can be accommodated
in varied manners: different robot(s) configurations
can be defined, different playground(s) settings can
be arranged and (clusters of) exercises can be defined
according to specific robot and layout configurations.
Our system provides a quite simple-to-use envi-
ronment supporting programming and experimenting
on Lego Mindstorms robots, a family of commercial
robots which is widely available, reasonably sophisti-
cated in terms of functions, pretty easy to use and suf-
ficiently affordable in terms of cost. Moreover, being
intrinsically modular in terms of sensors and actuators
number and distribution, is is easily and quickly re-
configurable and several different configurations can
be obtained starting from the same set of devices.
In MindLab, though, the main issue we worked
on so far is in giving rise to a truly e-learning frame-
work, capable to support methodologically and ped-
agogically sound distance activities, and in partic-
ular personalized and adaptive management of the
learner’s experience (Fernandez, G., Sterbini, A. and
Temperini, M., 2007; Limongelli, C., Sciarrone, F.,
Temperini, M., and Vaste, G., 2009; Sterbini, A. and
Temperini, M., 2009; Limongelli, C., Sciarrone, F.,
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