Exploiting Augmented Reality and Internet of Things for Gamma Ray Experiments in Educational Field

Carrying out experiments to understand the nature of the physical phenomenon turns out to be a fundamental step in the field of physics education, especially when lab activities characterized by possible personal risk for students are taken into account. In these cases, assuring a safe environment for students is mandatory. In this paper, the authors aim to make students relive a laboratory experience of gamma radiation spectrum measurement thanks to an Augmented Reality (AR) application capable of rendering an actual remote experiment on the students' mobile. This goal was achieved using an Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm protocol, such as the Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and an STM32L152RE microcontroller by STMicroelectronics to control stepper motors for gamma ray detector movement with respect to the source. To make the experience as realistic as possible, AR is used to view reproductions of sources under test and detectors through proper target recognition. In particular, displacement and rotation of a fake detector are sent to the actual apparatuses in a safe laboratory and applied to the actual detector that measure the gamma ray spectrum of known radioactive sources. It is worth noting that the proposed approach is not limited to application aimed at teaching, but has the potential to interface with industrial applications, with a view to Industry 4.0, as an optimization of production processes through the remote management of resources, to perform advanced analysis, to have a control over the state of machines and industrial production times.