Keynote by the Father of LabVIEW – Jeff Kodosky – during REV2021

The International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation (REV) is the annual conference of the International Association of Online Engineering (IAOE) together with the Global Online Laboratory Consortium (GOLC). In a globally connected world, the interest in online collaboration, teleworking, remote services and other digital working environments is rapidly increasing. In response to that, the general objective of this conference is to contribute and discuss fundamentals, applications and experiences in the field of Online and Remote Engineering, Virtual Instrumentation and other related new technologies.

This year, REV2021 was the 18th in a series of annual events concerning the area of Online Engineering, Cyber-physical Systems and Internet of Things as well as its influence on Society. 150 participants from all continents participated at this year’s conference. The event was held online from 24^th to 26^th of February. During REV2021, Jeff Kodosky gave a terrific opening keynote at the conference.

LabVIEW is a powerful engineering tool for industry, research, and academia. It has a long history of innovation and it continues to build on the foundational concepts of virtual instrumentation introduced over 30 years ago.

During his talk, Co-founder Jeff Kodosky explained LabVIEW’s interactive graphical programming environment and how this interface makes it easier to build measurement applications. The tight integration between the software and the measurement hardware gives unparalleled visibility to both code and signals which enables rapid prototyping of new systems, and efficient incremental enhancement of existing systems.

For decades, a broad range of measurement applications benefited from these capabilities including those in industry, research, and teaching. Arming students with powerful tools like LabVIEW inspire them, help them to learn more effectively, and better prepare them for entering the industry. Kodosky’s passion for both the product and the student’s use for learning made his talk one of the conference’s highlights.

The talk is online available here. 

During the conference, Doru Ursutiu from Transilvania University Brasov in Romania and was appointed as ‘IAOE Honorary President’ on the occasion of his 70th Birthday.

Ursutiu is one of the founders of IAOE back in 2006 and he is an internationally well-known scientist, engineer, and visionary in the field of Online Technologies in Engineering. He was the organizer of the first REV conference in 2005 and his work is inseparably connected with the industry. Through the years, he successfully managed to keep a balance between the academic community and the industrial world. The IAOE leadership is delighted to congratulate Doru Ursutiu on his birthday, thankful for his valuable work for IAOE, and honored to keep him as part of the IAOE in this new position.

Workshop on Artificial Intelligence, Cross Reality, and Online Learning

Another milestone for this conference was a pre-conference workshop, which was initiated by Dominik May (First Vice-President of IAOE and Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia, Athens, USA), Andreas Pester (The British University in Egypt, Cairo), and Michael E. Auer (CEO of IAOE). Over 20 international experts from 8 countries discussed recent developments and challenges on the interfaces of cross-reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and online learning (OL) technologies, in particular in the context of higher education.

XR technologies – understood as an umbrella term for all applications using augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies – are used in diverse scientific fields to enhance and innovate the instructional design, e.g., to bring learners into virtual learning environments, which otherwise are not accessible in the real world. AI and machine learning can support learning processes by offering recommendations and assistance to learners for simulation-based training, e.g., in medical and surgical training. OL already has a long-standing history in education and instructional design and has influenced a number of research fields like computer-based learning, computer-supported collaborative learning, computer-assisted training, and many more.

Over the last few years, it has been clearly detectable that the above-named fields are slowly merging and that current research is more and more focusing on developments at the interface between XR, AI, and OL. The workshop successfully intended to start a joint and fruitful discussion among experts in the respective fields to detect distinctions and commonalities in terms of advances in technology, instructional development, and educational research. During the workshop, the participants shared ideas and perspectives to build shared capacity for future work in terms of joint proposals, publications, and events. For further details about the workshop reach out to dominik.may@uga.edu.

The REV2022 Conference will be organized from 22-24 February 2022 by The British University in Egypt (BUE) in Cairo.