Virtual Control Labs Experimentation: The Water Tank System

This paper describes a new way to perform automated experiments using virtual laboratories. Experiments are developed and executed using a new software tool: the Experiment Editor. This tool uses virtual laboratories applications designed with educational purposes. The main features/advantages of the Experiment Editor are: 1) the possibility of modifying the initial functionality of the laboratories (i.e. adding new controllers to the plant), 2) analyzing the obtained results during the experiment and performing complex or repetitive tasks in a simple way, 3) and any others explained in the paper. To illustrate the utility of the Experiment Editor a very well-known system is used: the water tank system.