Weblab : a 4.0 teaching tool

Toulouse INP-ENSIACET has set up their own Weblab, a secured network interface, accessible to all, capable of controlling a machine and observing its phenomena in the same way as if you were standing in front of it. 

Assets of the INP-ENSIACET/AIGEP Weblab

• It encourages students with a new teaching method, unprecedented in the field of processes engineering on semi-industrial-sized machines. 
• Its possibility to remotely collaborate on the same machine, multiply the number of cross-cultural experiments and gain new experience in international partnerships.
• It enables students to access practical training on costly machines (many hundreds of thousands of euros) with a simple internet connection.
• It gives students the opportunity to apprehend automatization and remote controlling of a semi-industrial-sized production unit.  
• It encourages ITC distance learning by setting up an innovative digital tool.

Concrete experience

This WebLab was developed to offer an innovative way of teaching applied to practical work on processes engineering controls. In this WebLab the aim is to remotely control a discontinuous ternary distillation unit.

One teaching session has already been given with a WebLab in Brazil (the University of Sao Paulo) piloted by French students from Toulouse INP-ENSIACET. 15 students from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium have also accessed this remote-control experiment.