An Internet Based Laboratory for Control of a Safety Critical System

This paper reports on the development of an Internet based laboratory for control used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The experimental platform used in the laboratory is a safety critical 3 degree-of-freedom helicopter. The distinctive feature of the laboratory is a supervisory safety controller, which ensures the integrity of the 3DOF helicopter but at the same time allows the users to be flexible in their design choices. The main part of the controller is a real-time look ahead simulation of linearized plant dynamics with a feedback law. The paper also presents an evaluation of the remote laboratory facilities in a form of a comparison of the student experiences performing the experiments in a traditional laboratory setting and performing the same experiments using the remote laboratory.