Building a smart laboratory environment at a university via a cyber-physical system

Abstract

Contemporary activities in laboratories have become versatile and complicated, and can be significantly affected by the environment of the laboratory. Thus, a smart laboratory environment is needed to interpret and manipulate (implicit) environmental quantities, for improving and retaining the performance of laboratory activities. This paper presents a deployment of a cyber-physical system (CPS) gathering and acting on relevant information about physical quantities in laboratories. In particular, the proposed CPS can measure, analyze and regulate the thermal comfort. Improvements have been proposed to enhance the functionality of the system. Evaluations of an on-site deployment indicate the functionality of the proposed CPS. © 2013 IEEE.