CORBA and Web technologies applied to long distance learning

Recent growth in the Word Wide Web (WWW), Java and distributed object oriented technologies (e.g. CORBA) has received significant attention as means to provide a distributed infrastructure for computing and sharing of sophisticated and expensive laboratory equipment in computer engineering courses. This paper presents a CORBA-based toolkit integrated with the Web to allow the monitoring and experiment of a digital pendulum system in a class laboratory or with other educational institutions. A simple and easy-to-use Web graphical user interface (GUI) was developed to help students in the use of default control algorithms during lab experiences.