Internet of Things Remote Labs: Experiences with Data Analysis Experiments for Students Education

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are a pillar of European economy. For SMEs, the acquisition of particular competences is essential in order to participate in the digital transformation for the society and the market, and to keep an adequate level of competitiveness. Several national and European policies have been set-up to train the EU companies to the adoption and diffusion of the IoT technologies. This is also the main aim of the European project IoT4SMEs. In this paper we describe first practical experiences of the mentioned project in terms of the adaption of virtual and remote IoT-labs in the field of the analysis of moving images. The authors developed an IoT demonstrator for distance learning purposes on the basis of special, well-known filter and classification algorithms and a practically available, open cloud platform. The demonstrator is already being used in the aforementioned IoT4SMEs project. First analyses and findings of the practical use of the demonstrator are presented in this paper. The focus here is on the one hand side on the technical experience gained during implementation and on the other hand side on the analysis of the results in teaching. The demonstrator was tested during university use for the computer science education. With this paper, as a first result, possibilities for the improvement of the teaching are pointed out. In particular, the long-term usage of external cloud platforms is investigated. In addition, the IoT-based analysis of moving images for teaching must refer to video material from real life. Specific legal issues must therefore be considered. In this regard, the paper also examines the limitations and opportunities they provide for such remote labs under current privacy policies.