Extended Reality (XR) shows great potential in the manufacturing industry. It can help designers make initial proposals and iterations at low cost before manufacturers and investors decide whether to invest in research, development or production. According to the literature, prototyping in XR is easier to use than three-dimensional (3D) modelling with a personal computer and more capable of displaying 3D structures than paper drawing. In this comprehensive review, we systematically surveyed 68 manuscripts that met our search criteria on prototyping in XR, and discussed the possibility of transferring created virtual prototypes from XR to physical fabrication. We addressed five research questions about the main elements, display devices, user interaction methods, fabrication links, and future challenges. Based on these questions, we identified a clear technology trend with Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) being used in more than half the studies (53%). Our analysis also shows that nearly half the literature (32 of the 68 articles) focus on 'Model Construction and Rendering', whereas the crucial 'Link to Fabrication' is addressed in only 10% of studies, highlighting a critical gap. In view of these latest developments and gaps, we speculate on the challenges and opportunities in the field of prototyping in XR, especially in linking extended reality to fabrication, with the aim of guiding researchers towards new research directions.

Contact lenses have traditionally been used for vision correction applications. Recent advances in microelectronics and nanofabrication on flexible substrates have now enabled sensors, circuits, and other essential components to be integrated on a small contact lens platform. This has opened up the possibility of using contact lenses for a range of human–machine interaction (HMI) applications, including vision assistance, eye tracking, displays, and healthcare. In this article, we systematically review the range of smart contact lens materials, device architectures, and components that facilitate this interaction for different applications. In fact, evidence from our systematic review demonstrates that these lenses can be used to display information, detect eye movements, restore vision, and detect certain biomarkers in tear fluid. Consequently, whereas previous state-of the-art reviews in contact lenses focused exclusively on biosensing, our systematic review covers a wider range of smart contact lens applications in HMI. Moreover, we present a new method of classifying the literature on smart contact lenses according to their six constituent building blocks, which are the sensing, energy management, driver electronics, communications, substrate, and the input/output interfacing modules. Based on recent developments in each of these categories, we speculate the challenges and opportunities of smart contact lenses for HMI. Moreover, based on our analysis of the state-of-the-art, we develop guidelines for the future design of a self-powered smart contact lens concept with integrated energy harvesters, sensors, and communications modules. Therefore, our review is a critical evaluation of current data and is presented with the aim of guiding researchers to new research directions in smart contact lenses.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is one of the key UN strategies, which aims to encourage the development of competencies such as critical thinking and decision making. To ensure that students benefit from this education, there is general consensus that teaching methods need to focus on experiential learning. This may be challenging during a pandemic, or when experimental resources are limited. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to showcase our approach in teaching solar energy systems design to higher education students using a game-based virtual reality approach. Our approach enables students to immerse themselves in a virtual environment, which is safe for both students and their teachers. The game consists of two levels, where students are invited to solve an energy-related task in two different homes. Based on user feedback, our interactive learning tool improved student awareness of solar energy systems and how they can be used to satisfy domestic energy demands.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to education and progressed remote teaching as a predominant model for delivering educational content. However, the online teaching and learning model has its challenges, such as the lack of technological tools to quantity the student attention and engagement with the learning content. This paper focuses on developing an e-learning framework for capturing and analysing the students’ attention during remote teaching sessions and subsequently profiling their learning behaviour leveraging eye-tracking data. Our proposed eye-tracking solution deploys a webcam to capture and track raw gaze points that grant the user the freedom of natural head movement and scalability compared to conventional eye-tracking approaches. We derived various gaze metrics in conjunction with state-of the-art machine learning (ML) models like logistic regression, support vector machine and polynomial regression to classify the student attention with an accuracy above 91%. Furthermore, our findings can help in the early detection and diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among students, thus supporting their learning journeys by creating an adaptive learning environment tailored to their needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated our transition to an online and self-directed learning environment. In an effort to design better e-learning materials, we investigated the effectiveness of collecting psychophysiological eye-tracking data from participants in response to visual stimuli. In particular, we focused on collecting fixation data since this is closely related to human attention. Current wearable devices allow the measurement of visual data unobtrusively and in real-time, leading to new applications in wearable technology. Despite their accuracy, head-mounted eye trackers are too expensive for deployment on large-scale deployment. Therefore, we developed a low-cost, webcam-based eye tracking solution and compared its performance with a commercial head-mounted eye tracker. Four-minute lecture slides on the 3rdyear electronic engineering course were presented as stimuli to eight learners for data collection. Their eye movement was collected within the pre-defined area of interest (AOI). Our results demonstrate that a low-cost webcam-based eye-tracking solution, combined with machine learning algorithms, can achieve similar accuracy to the head-worn tracker. Based on these results, learners can use the eye tracker for attention guidance. Our work also demonstrates that these webcam-based eye trackers can be scaled up and used in large classrooms to provide real-time information to instructors regarding student attention and behaviour.

Lethality of Neurological diseases (NDs) are increasing every year and tend to mainly affect people under the age of 50. High rates of premature death and disability caused by NDs undoubtedly constrain societal development. However, seldom research about NDs Education program in universities has been developed. Therefore, this work is to review the educational programmes about implantable and wearable electronic devices for neurological disease applications in universities.

Nowadays, the field of microelectronics has become the drive for the advancement of the times, which promotes new demands on the cultivation of the students in colleges and universities. In order to keep up with the trend of the global engineering educational reform, three important reforms in education have been in progress step by step, including classroom teaching, innovative training and virtual laboratories. At first, for enhancing and integrating the existing courses related to the circuit, so that the students can comprehend the existing knowledge much more effectively, an important and effective curriculum reform has been performed by combining “Circuit Analysis” and “Analog Circuit Foundation” into one course; Then, innovative training has been carried out to cultivate the team skills among the students; Finally, in consideration of the rapid development of the electrical and electronic experiment, the conventional laboratory equipment may not satisfy the demand of every student due to financial constraints, therefore, the construction of virtual simulation experiment center is an efficient way to break this bottleneck. As a result, the atmosphere of academic innovation of the pursuit of truth, advocacy of science, brave exploration, dare to practice have been formed in colleges and universities through the above innovative engineering education reform.

The coming fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks encourage to support several innovations and services, some of which will demand Ultra-reliable and Low-latency Communications (URLLC). For instance, URLLC can support real-time control to facilitate several emerging applications, such as robotic arms in industrial applications, and remote surgery for healthcare applications. However, URLLC is expected to be supported without considering the resources usage efficiency in wireless control systems due to the challenging to satisfy Quality of Service (QoS) requirements at the expense of diminishing energy efficiency. In this paper, we analyze uplink energy efficiency in URLLC utilizing multiple antennas in the transmitter and the receiver as well (MIMO) in real-time wireless control systems. We firstly formulate an optimization problem to maximize energy efficiency concerning the effect of the control convergence rate constraint. Then, we develop an exhaustive search method to obtain the maximum energy efficiency. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of our proposed method.

Mobile networks are prevalent in today's world, being used in a variety of applications ranging from personal use to the work environment and other. Ensuring security for users in a mobile network is therefore increasingly important. Denial-of-service attacks or DoS proved to be the biggest threat to mobile networks in recent years. A lot of work has been done in DoS targeting the infrastructure of the mobile network. User-targeted DoS attacks have been neglected in comparison. The fourth generation of cellular networks 4G LTE is the fastest growing mobile network in terms of subscriber numbers. The security aspect of mobile networks has improved throughout the generations, however, 4G proved to still have vulnerabilities in the signaling plane that allow a malicious attacker to target a specific user. Deploying a rogue base station and forcing the targeted user to connect to it is possible. The attacker could then deny selected services of the targeted user such as voice and SMS services. In this paper, we survey the work done on user-targeted DoS attacks in LTE networks. We analyze the 3GPP LTE standard specifications that allow such attacks. We also test the response of a LTE mobile device to tweaked Attach Accept messages during an Attach Procedure. We furthermore examine the conditions that affect the attack when we have equal priority cells. We finally present a case study of how a targeted user connected to an LTE network provider could be denied SMS and voice services therefore denying 2-factor authentication. We tested the scenarios using open-source implementations of the LTE network stack and widely available Software Defined Radios.

Traffic flowing through a software defined network is vulnerable to disruptions caused by malicious switches. The malicious behaviors are diverse such as dropping traffic, adding traffic or modifying it. A switch could be malicious or otherwise dysfunctional or misconfigured. A lot of work in SDN has addressed the problem by securing the control plane and having it validate network wide properties and policy compliance, e.g., loop-freedom, reachability and resolution of conflicting rules. In this paper, we argue that it is imperative as well to ensure the correctness of traffic forwarding itself. Therefore we define a threat model for the security and correctness of forwarding in an SDN switch. We describe several malicious behaviors that could be encountered at an SDN switch and propose possible solutions to each fault type. The capabilities of the SDN paradigm to detect and deter such attacks are analyzed.