Design, simulation and testing of a cloud platform for sharing digital fabrication resources for education

Abstract Cloud and IoT technologies have the potential to support applica- tions that are not strictly limited to technical fields. This paper shows how digital fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs) can leverage cloud technologies to enable resource sharing and provide remote access to distributed exp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gianluca Cornetta, Javier Mateos, Abdellah Touhafi, Gabriel-Miro Muntean
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2019-08-01
Series:Journal of Cloud Computing: Advances, Systems and Applications
Subjects:
Online Access:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13677-019-0135-x
Description
Summary:Abstract Cloud and IoT technologies have the potential to support applica- tions that are not strictly limited to technical fields. This paper shows how digital fabrication laboratories (Fab Labs) can leverage cloud technologies to enable resource sharing and provide remote access to distributed expensive fabrication resources over the internet. We call this new concept Fabrication as a Service (FaaS), since each resource is exposed to the internet as a web ser- vice through REST APIs. The cloud platform presented in this paper is part of the NEWTON Horizon 2020 technology-enhanced learning project. The NEWTON Fab Labs architecture is described in detail, from system concep- tion and simulation to system cloud deployment and testing in NEWTON project small and large-scale pilots for teaching and learning STEM subjects.
ISSN:2192-113X