Optical Metrology, Remote Laboratories, and Cloud Computing

Cloud computing, the paradigm of providing external IT resources "as a service" with the underlying infrastructure transparent to the user, offers new dimensions in the economic utilization of limited resources. Expanding on this concept by adding remote access to more conventional hardware, such as a scientific laboratory, creates a new environment for research, where findings, including the raw data, can not only be shared throughout the community using the internet, but just as easily verified, without even having to replicate the original setup. In this paper, we report our recent work on building a remote laboratory for digital holographic metrology. We describe the architecture and the techniques involved in setting up the remote controlling metrology system. Further consideration will be given to the integration into an advanced infrastructure for remote experimentation, data storage and publication.