Remote pilot mill laboratory, experiments in mineral education at NTNU

A vital component of engineering education is the hands-on experience provided by the physical laboratories. Large educational experimental facilities are unfortunately expensive to develop and run. The age of the PC has introduced a development towards computer operated models of any process, which may give students a good and cheap insight into processing. The younger students tend, however, to view such models as just another computer game. By providing real experiments in real time on internet, the following advantages can be achieved: � Expensive laboratory or unique experimental facilities can be shared between universities and research institutions. � It might be possible to choose whether complicated test facilities should be set up at a given campus or the experiment bought on internet. � More advanced off campus students can be offered experimental facilities. A general structure of a remote laboratory may include the following key features: The Client PC is the remote computer with the Internet access and used by the student. The Server PC is linked to the Experiment (in our case the Remote Mill) situated at a University away from the student. A Network Camera is used to take images of the experiment, and these images are processed through an interface program running on the server computer. The remote mill concept will be tried out by students in Zimbabwe late 2004. The open part of the package can be visited on: http://www.remotemill.no/