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The Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is accelerating the adoption of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies in the industry. One of the most critical benefits concerns the possibility of manufacturing complex-shaped components, which are not feasible or too expensive using traditional processes. Recent studies are evaluating the SLM manufacturability of closed impellers through laboratory tests. The adoption of numerical simulation models for achieving this goal is still limited due to the complexity of the additive process and the number of phases to be considered. The paper presents a numerical model developed in the ANSYS workbench platform for simulating the SLM process of closed impellers. This work is one of the first studies available in the literature for such a particular kind of components. The paper describes the overall simulation model and the steps required for its definition. Furthermore, boundary conditions and process parameters are provided for a better understanding of the model. A case study illustrates its application to a specific part, intending to evaluate (i) impact between the recoater and the component, (ii) maximum von Mises stress and (iii) maximum displacement during the printing phase and following post-processing. These evaluations will support design and manufacturing engineers during product and process engineering. The promising results of this study are encouraging further research about the application of SLM for closed impellers.

A mixed reality (MR) system, by providing visual, auditory, and haptic feedback to the learner, can offer a high level of immersion and realism, especially in the healthcare context. In medical training through MR simulations, it is particularly important to avoid mental overload, discomfort, fatigue, and stress, to guarantee productive learning. The present work proposes a systematic assessment of stress, cognitive load, and performance (through subjective and objective measures) of students during an MR simulation for the rachicentesis procedure. A specific application has been developed to enhance the sense of realism, by showing, over the skill trainer, a digital patient that responds with auditory and visual feedback, based on the learner’s interaction. A sample of 18 students has been enrolled in the pilot study. Preliminary results suggest the effectiveness of the proposed MR application using Hololens: high performances are achieved, and the cognitive conditions are well balanced.

An adequate medical education is the key driver of healthcare quality improvement. Technological innovations have led to consistent improvement in learning outcomes but the systematic measurement of students performance and cognitive workload need further research. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative method for the Design and Development of new advanced learning models, to be used in the training of medical students, which includes also the analysis of students performance and cognitive ergonomics. A web-based survey, on team simulation training and technology role, has been administered to 180 medical students. On the basis of this analysis, a list of guidelines for the design of medical education training has been proposed.

Although performance measures are strongly used in the field of medical education to evaluate skills of trainees and medical students, the assessment of their cognitive state is relatively “uncommon”. This fact is disadvantageous if we consider the introduction of technologies as physical medical simulators and augmented/virtual reality devices, which may represent an improvement in the students’ immersion in the simulated scenario or, conversely, a potential risk of a serious information overload. Therefore, a precise assessment of the cognitive conditions is an essential element of the design process of a medical training session. This study aims to provide the current state in literature on the assessment of cognitive state during medical simulation training sessions. It provides critical insights on the validity and reliability of current metrics and helps in the selection of measurements tools when applied in simulation-based training contexts.

Molding is one of the most widely used processing technologies in manufacturing. Among typical molding parameters, the mold temperature is a critical one for the quality of the molding process. A solution to this issue can be the employment of induction heating which, through a high-frequency electromagnetic field, produces eddy currents and a consequent rapid heating of the material into the cavity of the mold. The necessity to maintain the mold walls at the operative temperature makes the induction heating to be one of the most efficient non-contact means of heating. In fact, induction heating is characterized by quickness, efficiency, and energy saving; however, the design and the sizing of an induction heating system is complex due to different parameters involved in the electromagnetic and thermal phenomena. In this context, the paper aims to define a methodology to support engineers in the design and sizing of an induction heating system for molds, taking as case study a mold for composite parts. A model-based approach is proposed to analyze and simulate the mold heating, considering three different levels of modelling: Analytical (0D), Finite-Difference Methods (2D) and Finite Element Methods (3D). The Analytical approach investigates the solution of the physical equations applied to the volume of the material involved. Instead, the Finite-Difference approach (2D) solves the heat transfer problem by discretizing the domain and by solving for temperature at discrete points. Finally, the Finite Element method (3D) solves partial differential equations on a 3D discretized domain.

The present research paper would propose a novel social healthcare model for Italian older people, having carried out an in-deep analysis of the current scenario. In fact, studying older people over 75 who live in the inner areas of the Marche region has allowed acquiring the knowledge of their main needs and characteristics. This paper aims to study such the sample considering that nowadays the society trend is characterized by an increasing number of older people in comparison with previous decades. Then, the improvement of the current social healthcare model becomes an important challenge, trying to support older people in being more autonomous and less isolated, escaping from the potential related depression. According to the survey results, the services that a novel social healthcare model should provide are suggested.

Research on information technologies has seen in the last 20 years a very fast growth showing an increase of attention to the development of solution able to satisfy people with different characteristics and needs. Today, one of the main research topics aims at the definition of technologies and tools to support elderly people independent living. In this context, the present paper proposes a new home automation system able to support people with the early-stage dementia in kitchen management. This system is managed through an adaptive interface, which guides the user in kitchen activities, provides information on the functioning of all devices in the kitchen specifically, allows to set and control all household appliances in a simple and intuitive way and gives information, adapting to the end-user’s capabilities and needs. Although this preliminary evaluation only included a small number of participants, the results showed that the introduction of a new smart home system can be useful to individuals suffering early-stage dementia to facilitate independent living and remain longer in their own homes.

The ageing population is leading to a significant impact on current society and it is introducing new challenges to find innovative solutions to help older adults to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, and live independently. In this context, the present paper provides a usability assessment of a Smart Kitchen developed to support people with the early-stage dementia in cooking activities. The smart system is managed through an adaptable user interface, which provides information on the meal preparation and allows to configure and manage all household appliances in a simple and intuitive way. Although this preliminary evaluation only included a small number of participants, the results showed that the system could be useful to help and guide people to remain independent in their own home environment for daily kitchen activities.

Helping older people to remain in their homes and to be more autonomous and less isolated, escaping from the potential related depression, is a global challenge. To support people ‘age in place’, the paper proposes a specific data collection to establish the possible requirements of a novel Product Service Platform for wellbeing and health of older people. The study of a community of older people over 75 who live in their homes has allowed acquiring the knowledge of their main needs and characteristics. Two focus groups with experts dealing with the ageing population were then set up to define: (a) how to design an IT artifact that meets end-users needs and (b) the services that a Product Service Platform should provide.

The Adaptive systems are becoming essential into our daily life, thanks to the fast improvement of computing technology and the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Despite many efforts have been made to improve adaptive systems design methods they remain very heterogeneous and mostly limited to each domain of application. Moreover, the most of existing adaptive applications propose specific approaches for the development of new systems, without considering the opportunity to convert existing smart systems into adaptive systems. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces an approach able to support the designers in adapting an already existing system. To this purpose, a new design method, consisting of the three following steps, has been developed: (1) context analysis; (2) adaptive module design; and (3) system re-design. The described approach is applied, as an example, to a Wi-Fi system for the control and management of household appliances developed by a large Italian company.

In an inclusive and accessible smart environments context the implementation of the “design for all” method presents several critical issues. In fact, the universal design represents a difficult challenge for the designer because it depends on the complexity of human intentions in a particular time and place. For this reason, we propose a new approach that aims to support the design of inclusive environments by improving the user-environment interaction.

Search engines play an important role in determining the success of e-commerce. Despite many efforts have been made to improve searching methods (SM) they remain mostly limited to semantic elaboration of keywords. This implies that the SM are not capable of supporting the research of products that best satisfy customers, according to their characteristics and background. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces an approach able to define a new ontological model that formalizes the knowledge necessary to implement a search engine capable to guide the customer to search the desired product or service according to his/her characteristics and needs. To this purpose, three essential aspects have been considered: a User Ontology (UO), a Product Ontology (PO) and rules (or properties) to link the user and product ontologies. The described approach is applied, as an example, to the products class known as Smart Objects that are part of the Internet of Things (IoT) market.

Touchscreen technologies have become increasingly common in personal devices, so it seems necessary to improve their accessibility and usability for the older people. In the past years, a lot of studies have been conducted to improve touch interfaces, however, most them do not consider older people with very low attitude with ICTs. Moreover, the majority of studies date back 2014, so they lack to consider the most innovative technologies available today. The present study involves a sample of older people without previous experience with ICTs with the aim of analyzing how basic features of a touchscreen interface affect their performances with typical touch-gestures. A total of 22 participants have been involved. Results partially confirm the existent literature and partially reveal new interesting findings that can be useful to improve the touch screen accessibility for older people.

Conceptual design is a central phase for the generation of the best product configurations. The design freedom suggests optimal solutions in terms of assembly, manufacturing, cost and material selection but a guided decision making approach based on multi-objective criteria is missing. The goal of this approach is to define a framework and a detailed approach for the definition of feasible design options and for the selection of the best one considering the combination of several production constrains and attributes. The approach is grounded on the concept of functional basis and the module heuristics used for the definition of product modules and the theory of Multi Criteria Decision Making approach (MCDM) for a mathematical assessment of the best design option. A complex product (tool-holder carousel of a machine tool) is used as a case study to validate the approach. Product modules have been re-designed and prototyped to efficiently assess the gain in terms of assembly time, manufacturability and costs.

The continuous progress of interaction technologies reveals that we are witnessing a revolution that is leading to a redefinition of the concept of "user interface" and to the development of new ways to interact with the electronic devices of all sizes and capabilities. Current trends in research related to the Human-Machine Interaction HMI show a considerable interest toward gesture, motion-based and full-body based interactions. In this context, a User-Centered Design UCD methodology to implement these novel interaction paradigms into consumer products is proposed with the aim to improve its usability, intuitiveness and experience. A case study is used to validate the methodology and measure the achieved improvements in user performance.

Nowadays to design a product able to adapt to end-users with different needs and abilities it is necessary to manage a multitude of information coming from the analysis of different context of use. This means that we have to handle parallel and interdependent UCD multiple process. This research aims to define a methodology, which may apply this philosophy into design practice. In particular, it aims to provide tools to summarize the information needed to analyze user characteristics and needs, allows the designer to extrapolate the user’s needs and support the selection of prototype technologies suitable to the user categories.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is one of the most strategic research fields of research due to the increasing aging of the world population and the developments of assistive technologies, which enable people with specific demands to live longer and better by providing specific care. It has been demonstrated that AAL technologies provide effective support to frail people and their application is increasing in home and medical contexts with positive effects on costs reduction. However, such models have been rarely applied outside the domestic context. This paper describes the application of AAL concepts to manufacturing in order to support frail people to properly handle machine tools and complex systems. It presents an industrial case study focusing on machine tool operators: under these circumstances frailty assumes a broad sense as people have to carry out highly specialized jobs and also mild deficiencies can represent a frailty (i.e. slight reduction in sight, hands that are not perfectly steady, slightly reduced mobility or human force). The case study in particular aims at designing an adaptive user interface based on AAL principles and user-centered approach to support frail operators to work better and more safely.

In order to study and develop adaptive user interfaces with the purpose to guarantee socialization, safety and environmental sustainability in a domestic day-by-day living space, a new method of holistic and adaptive user interface is proposed to support the modelling of information related to the user and the context of the interaction to generate the user profiles, subjects older than 40 years with different levels of technology affinity have been considered. The new adaptive user interfaces prototypes will be tested through different use cases in the context of smart home environments.

Designing a multi-user adaptive interface means designing for diversity in end-users and contexts of use, and implies making alternative design decisions, at various levels of the interaction project, inherently leading to diversity in the final design outcomes. Nowadays Adaptive User Interfaces (AUIs) is becoming one of the major objectives addressed by Human Computer Interaction research. The present study provides an overview about the methods currently applied to the definition and development of AUIs. In order to study and develop adaptive user interfaces with the purpose to guarantee socialization, safety and environmental sustainability in a domestic day-by-day living space, a new method of holistic and adaptive user interface is proposed to support the modeling of information related to the user and the context of the interaction. In order to generate the user profiles, subjects older than 40 years with different levels of technology affinity will be considered. These prototypes will be tested through different use cases in the context of smart home environments. The final goal is to produce smart objects and consumer goods able to automatically satisfy the different skills, abilities, needs and human preferences, in an environment where each solutions address different individuals.

The increase in product disposal rates and the speed of technology development are creating a new challenge in the waste management field. In this context, it is becoming even more important to evaluate the impacts of products at their End of Life (EoL), during the early design stage. The paper presents an approach to determine the most convenient EoL scenario for each product component from an environmental and economical point of view. The designer is aided in making choices through five EoL indices, one for each EoL scenario (Reuse, Remanufacturing, Recycle, Incineration and Landfill). The EoL indices have been used to evaluate the environmental and economical sustainability of the EoL scenarios for a cooker hood during a re-design process.

It is well known that industrial processes require large consumption of energy and other resources in the realization of products. This exploitation of energy is reflected on the environment, in terms of environmental impact, and on the ecosystem of the entire supply chain, in terms of social and economic impacts, which can be measured through specific tools. The measurement of these environmental, social and economic impacts is an essential step towards both the process monitoring and sustainability energy assessment. Numerous studies have recently been focused on industrial energy use and energy efficiency in various manufacturing sectors.

In order to obtain even more competitive and efficient electric motors, it is necessary to take into, during the account design phase, not only the electromagnetic performances, but also the environmental impact and Life Cycle Cost (LCC). The paper presents a methodology and a software tool for the evaluation of the LCC of electric motors (particular attention is reserved to the manufacturing and use costs), yet during the early design phases. The integration of the proposed tool in a larger platform, to consider also the environmental impacts and motor performances, is also presented. The cost estimation tool has been tested for small sized asynchronous single-phase electric motors for household appliances.

In the last years, some attempts have been made to explore the use of smart objects, with the purpose of monitoring well-being and supporting independent living. However, an inventory of characteristics of smart assistive devices currently available on the market is still lacking. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of such products and in particular to analyse their functionalities in order to understand if they can be considered inclusive and if they effectively match the needs of elderly. This review can be useful for researchers and designers of Ambient Intelligent Environments, to realise where efforts should be focused in order to match the demand from the elderly people’s side.

Haptic simulation of materials is one of the most important challenges in human-computer interaction. A fundamental step to achieve it regards the definition of how human beings can encode the information acquired by different sensorial channels' stimulation. In this context, this paper presents the study, implementation and evaluation of a multi-modal cutaneous feedback device CFD for the simulation of material textures. In addition to tactile stimulation, two further sensory components e.g. eyesight and hearing are integrated to support the user to better recognize and discriminate different classes of materials and then, overcome previous identified drawbacks. An experimental protocol is tuned to assess the relevance of each stimulated channel in material texture recognition. Tests are carried out with real and virtual materials. Result comparison is used to validate the proposed approach and verify the realism of simulation.

In the last years, some attempts have been made to explore the use of smart objects, with the purpose of monitoring well-being and supporting people’s independent living. However an inventory of characteristics of smart products currently available on the market is still lacking. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of such products in order to: (1) understand if their features really match users’ needs, answering to the definition of assistive technology and, consequently, (2) understand if an environment embedded with SOs can be considered as assistive too, taking into consideration the attributes given by the definition of the SOs, of being embedded in familiar objects and immerse in the users’ surround.