Remote labs are interactive, remotely accessible laboratories for students who are learning applied topics and who need to test on
a platform. The aim is to make a more efficient use of lab resources over the Internet, so that students can test digital applications as if they were testing in situ and not in simulation.
Students, or any one interested, are invited to interact with a remote device by having access to its view through a webcam applet and control it by switching buttons virtualized on a simple control panel or uploading control models or software to control it.
This resource is fundamental to enable students to access a real hardware platform even in restrictive situations. Remotely sharing labs was identified as a means of making best use of public investments into highly specialized equipment and offering access to sophisticated labs to all students with a respective interest or focus of studies. Remote labs support the sharing of these laboratory resources among students on the Pan-European space, initially as part of possibly shared courses and in perspective for individual research projects. Simultaneously this has proven to be fundamental under restrictive situations as the recent COVID-19 lockdown situations. Enabling virtual access to real equipment is one of the highly innovative aspects of the SEEDS project.