Deployment of a Web-based Control Laboratory Using HTML5

Abstract

With the recent achievements in Internet and communication technology and its utilization in online laboratory, remote learning and online laboratory are made possible in the last few decades. This not only provides learning opportunities for people living in rural areas of developing countries, but also offers simple alternatives for those who are already able to access educational resources. The evolution of Web technologies makes it relatively easy to facilitate laboratory deployments, thus, more and more different online laboratory platforms emerge. However, the use of Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML5) and related standards such as WebGL and CSS3 in experimental platform, which is future trends and provides full-featured environment, is rare so far. This paper introduces a new HTML5 version of Networked Control System Laboratory (NCSLab), which has been developing for over 10 years since 2006. The 3D version of NCSLab has been developing for almost 5 years in Wuhan University (WHU), whose rendering solution is changed from Flash 3D engine to HTML5 recently. Therefore, Flash player plug-in is eliminated to provide better user experience for users since most of the mainstream web browsers are compatible with HTML5.