Abstract-The objective of this work is to address, from the educational perspective, the trends in the software engineerring discipline, which rely on a significant increase in the use of remotely accessible and remotely controlled embedded devices. The paper presents an approach and experiences with introducing robotic devices accessible online to a course on Cyberphysical Systems in an undergraduate Software Engineering program. A closer look at both technologies, online labs and cyberphysical systems education, reveals that they are not in sync. Remote labs have embraced a wide variety of science and engineering disciplines, but they are not popular in software engineering. On the other hand, software engineering education, being crucial to the development of cyberphysical systems has not focused on such systems by any measure. This project and paper aim at addressing this gap.Keywords-Software Engineering Education, Cyberphysical Systems Education, Embedded Systems Education, Robotic Devices, Online Labs, Remote Labs.
IntroductionWith the changing landscape of the software engineering discipline, the emergence of new technologies and dramatically increasing scale of applications, it is necessary to address new challenges in education caused by these changes. One such area of tremendous growth is the field of Cyberphysical Systems (CPS), which combine access to physical devices with connectivity to the Internet, and are critical to the nation's wealth and security. They are all networked and almost exclusively software controlled, thus becoming a new issue in software engineering and technology, in addition to being a substantial factor in development of national economies. Traditionally structured educational programs in computing did not catch up, yet, with respective developments in industry, therefore, education and curriculum development should be an integral component of construction and use of such systems. This is especially true in undergraduate software engineering programs, which this paper addresses.iJOE -Vol. 13, No. 8, 2017 133 There are not that many reports in the literature on dealing with related problems or their solutions [19].Consequently, the objective of this paper is to present an insight into the development of a lab and related projects within this lab, which could help establish similar laboratories in undergraduate software engineering programs and related disciplines. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the Cyberphysical Systems course itself, Section 3 outlines the need for and essence of development projects, and Section 4 presents the contents of the lab and some results from first experiences. Section 5 presents evolution of the cyberphysical systems education in the context of disruptive technologies and Section 6 concludes the paper with discussion of some findings.
Undergraduate Course on Cyberphysical SystemsThe Cyberphysical Systems course discussed here is a new course based on a previously offered Embedded Systems Programming course, wi...