Mobile Devices and Remote Labs in Engineering Education

The remote labs or WebLabs promote the experimentation in the studies of engineering allowing the access and control of real laboratory equipment through Internet. In general a WebLab is a client-server application where the client application can only be used from a PC, and it is not considered the use of mobile devices as potential clients. This is due to the fact that the WebLabs are designed from the hardware point of view, and not from the software engineering point of view. Any WebLab can be designed and implemented to be accessed using a mobile device, but only the AJAX technology can provide a unique solution for a wide range of platforms, including mobile devices. This work compares the different strategies to include mobile devices in remote labs and describes the benefits of using the AJAX approach.