由於儀器控制與網路技術的興起，經由網際網路遠端進行實驗室的實驗已可實現。經由虛擬儀器控制的介面，學生或工程師可以在任何時間及任何地點遠端控制儀器與設備來進行控制及實驗。這樣的虛擬實驗室概念已在工程應用與遠距教學上扮演重要的角色。
本論文主要探討虛擬實驗室，並提出三個應用在產業與教育領域之系統。第一個是單一實驗虛擬實驗室，由位於同一區域內數個相連接的儀器設備所組成，此實驗以環境測試為主，目的為在產業上測試並評估電子樣品的可靠度。在此系統中我們提出二階層式的軟體架構與設計考量，以提昇系統發展之效率。上層的Web Application可直接引用底層的COM元件所提供的介面與呼叫流程。此COM元件主要是負責整合各種不同的儀器控制機制與協調儀器存取；而Web application負責資料庫設計、網路安全與使用者圖形介面的議題。此系統允許使用者在遠端進行環境實驗、監視測試情況、並取得測試資料。
第二個是分散式實驗虛擬實驗室，由分散在不同地方的實驗所組成，目的在提供使用者以透明的方式來遠端操作與練習更多樣性的實驗。在此系統中，我們採用分散式物件導向技術.NET Remoting來整合分散於各地區域實驗，以獲得較好的網路效能與良好的擴充性。另外，採用AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) 技術以提供較好的互動性與輕量的使用者圖形介面。同時也提供適當的管理機制，經由管理網頁以方便管理使用者、教導者、與實驗，並建立起彼此間使用的關係。同時，經由一些學生先期測試，整體而言，系統得到正面的評估結果，也顯示系統的有效性與正確性。
最後則是設計出兩個分別適用於單一實驗虛擬實驗室與分散式實驗虛擬實驗室的即時視訊串流架構，可讓使用者能在遠端實驗期間觀看所有儀器的即時影像。在此成果中一個影像控制伺服器可同時執行多個串流程序，多個儀器可同時被多個使用者經瀏覽器監視。我們所提出的架構具有良好的擴充性，並可以根據目前系統負荷或視覺上的需求，經由管理網頁來動態調整影像的服務與輸出品質。效能評估結果也證實所提出方案的可行性。

Due to the popularity of controllable instrumentation and the wide diffusion of network technology, conducting laboratory experiments remotely via the Internet has been realized. Through virtual instrument control panels, students and engineers can remotely control real instruments and conduct experiments at any time and from any location. Such virtual laboratory concepts have played an essential role in distance learning and engineering applications.
This dissertation investigates virtual laboratory and present three works applying to the industrial and educational domains. The first work is a Single-Experiment Virtual Laboratory (SEVL) which consists of several adjacent instruments located in a same geographic place. The single experiment is dedicated for environmental testing, mainly for testing and evaluating the reliability of the electronic specimen in industrial applications. In this work, we proposed a two-layer software architecture and designing considerations and expected to promote the efficiency of the system development. The upper layer, called the Web application, can immediately employ the uniform interface and follow the call flow provided in the lower layer, called the COM component. The COM component integrates various instrument control mechanisms and coordinates concurrent instrument access, while the Web application addresses database design, network security, and graphic user interface (GUI) issues. This developed system allows users to remotely conduct environmental experiments, monitor testing condition, and acquire testing data.
The second work is a Distributed-Experiment Virtual Laboratory (DEVL), which consists of the scattered experiments located in different places. The objective of such a laboratory is to offer users with the capability of remotely performing and practicing more diverse experiments in a transparent manner. In this work, the distributed object technique, .NET Remoting, is adopted to integrate scattered experiments, resulting in a better network performance and a well-extendable architecture. Additionally, the AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technique is adopted to provide a more interactive and lightweight GUI (Graphic User Interface) without browser plug-ins. Moreover, adequate management functionalities offered by the developed system through administrative Web pages facilitates to well manage users, instructors and experiments, as well as further establishing their relationships. Though preliminarily tested by some students, all, the system obtained positive evaluation and also revealed its effectiveness and correctness.
The final work is to devise two promising real-time video streaming architectures to individually cope with SEVL and DEVL environments, enabling clients to view real-time video of the all involved instruments during a remote experiment. In this work, by means of running multiple concurrent streaming processes at a video control server, multiple instruments can be monitored simultaneously by multiple clients. The proposed architectures possess excellent scalability. Also the provided services and output quality of a real-time video can be dynamically adjusted depending on system load and visual requirements via administrative Web pages. The performance evaluation results have verified their feasibility.

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