Maria de Fátima Chouzal

A balance board can be a useful tool for increasing stability and balance, which is advantageous for a variety of users, including athletes, elderly people, people recovering from injuries or neurodegenerative diseases, and stroke patients. The majority of these balance boards typically comprise a simple board or platform on a pivot point, without providing any feedback data to the user. The instrumentation of these boards can enlarge the applicability of these boards by providing a way to record user performance and visualize the execution of the exercises with the board. This work will offer a demo to present the prototype of a balance board that was instrumented with an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and microcontroller to provide orientation data. The developed application software allows storing historic data and provides visual and acoustic feedback. This portable prototype is built on top of a commercially available balance board and the user interface runs on a web- based application.

This study aims to explore the use of force vs. time data obtained from an isometric handgrip test to match a frailty state based on the TFI score. BodyGrip, a novel prototype system, is used for handgrip strength over 10 s time interval tests. A cross-sectional study with a non-probabilistic sample of community-dwelling elderly women was conducted. The force/time data collected from the dominant handgrip strength test, together with the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) test results, were used to train artificial neural networks. Different models were tested, and the frailty matching of TFI scores reached a minimum accuracy of 75%. Despite the small sample size, the BodyGrip system appears to be a promising tool for exploring new frailty-related features. The adopted strategy foresees ultimately configuring the system to be used as an expedite mode for identifying individuals at risk, allowing an easy, quick, and frequent person-centered care approach. Additionally, it is suitable for following up of the elderly in particular, and it may assume a relevant role in the mitigation of the increase in frailty evolution during and after the imposed isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further use of the system will improve the robustness of the artificial neural network algorithm.

Handgrip strength (HGS) is an indicator of muscle condition and general health wellbeing. Usually, instruments measuring handgrip strength only identify its maximum value. This preliminary study is focused on identifying force vs. time parameters which could contribute to better describe individual strength. They were obtained during a Handgrip strength test of 15 s in a sample group of 94 university students. The tests were conducted with a smart multifunction novel prototype dynamometer, named BodyGrip. Mean values of quantities related to the ability to develop and to maintain strength in percentage of maximum handgrip strength, were extracted from the force vs time profile. Contrary to maximum HGS, such quantities were found to be independent of the participant’s anthropometric characteristics. Individual comparisons based on those quantities are therefore not affected by the anthropometric characteristics. It was possible to identify individuals, differing on the development of HGS. Results suggest that the functionality of the BodyGrip tool enables a more thorough characterization of the time profile of the Handgrip strength that might influence the knowledge of the muscle functions, such as power development and endurance.

The Online Experimentation @FEUP lab gathers a set of experimental resources based on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Haptic Systems. The design, development and implementation of those resources are guided by the following main goals: familiarizing students with the referred technologies, complement hands-on experimentation, motivate students and promote knowledge gain. A brief presentation of the online experimental activities most utilized and evaluated in the past five years in context of different undergraduate courses and at the K12 level is presented. In all the studies conducted, the strategies adopted involve pre- and post-testing to assess knowledge gain, experimental group activities, and individual response to surveys to assess student reaction. The results published in journals, conferences proceedings and book chapters are discussed.

Augmented reality (AR) enables users to overlay new information over the real environment, allowing them to get a clear perception of physical systems or even to interact with them. AR is a powerful and promising tool in many areas, including engineering‐related ones. Therefore, it has aroused growing interest in engineering education. The main objectives of this study are to examine engineering students' feedback and conceptual knowledge gain resulting from using an online AR app. The design and development of the app, named “AR DC circuit puzzle,” was driven by the intention to familiarize students with AR, using a tool that addresses direct current circuits' concepts, a subject belonging to almost all undergraduate engineering syllabi. Through structural equation modeling, the analysis of the relationships between several psychological traits related to the use of the AR app revealed that attitude toward the use of AR is very positive and mostly driven by the value students perceived this app to have in the context of their engineering training. The use of a pre‐ and posttest methodology resulted in large average normalized gains and effect sizes, indicating conceptual knowledge gain. The current worldwide situation triggered the massive use of digital tools; hence, it can be anticipated that in the future, there will be a greater need for online learning resources. This study, involving a large sample of engineering students in three consecutive academic years, shows that the used online tool based on AR can engage students and, with the right strategy, can promote knowledge gain.

The Universidade Júnior, Junior University, is a pioneering initiative of University of Porto taking place during July, since 2005. At the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto different activities are regularly offered in many of its nine departments and oriented for STEM areas also concerned with trying to contribute to foster young students into these areas. The use of emerging technologies is highly accepted by youngsters. So, some of the activities proposed in the context of the Junior University rely on them. Given the great attractiveness created by the use of remote experimentation, virtual reality and augmented reality with haptics interaction, a new application was developed. It is based on the integration of the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 with a developed set of virtual reality applications. The present work reports results of the use of the Oculus Rift to create the user emersion in a virtual room where different experiments are available and can be “touched” by using 1 DOF haptic. The authors are concerned in evaluating aspects as motivation, adequateness and its immersive capabilities. This work presents a preliminary evaluation study.