More than 80% of young people (11-17 years) do not meet recommended levels of physical activity, while excessive sedentary smartphone use increases rapidly, highlighting the need for accessible tools that promote active and kinesthetic learning. This study investigates whether smartphones can function as wearable devices capable of tracking movement, detecting biomechanical errors, and providing real-time corrective feedback. Using a user-centered design approach, we developed a gamified Exertion Trainer in which children practiced a straight punch (boxing jab) while wearing a smartphone on their wrist. Embedded accelerometer data were processed on board to deliver immediate, task-specific feedback on arm orientation, using gravity as a fixed reference frame. A randomized crossover trial was conducted with 40 children, comparing a feedback condition with a no-feedback control across two test orders. Quantitative results showed that real-time feedback produced a statistically significant improvement in punch accuracy (p < 0.001) and reduced performance variability, with the strongest effects observed after initial practice and partial retention following feedback removal. Qualitative findings indicated higher engagement and stronger perceptions of kinesthetic learning when feedback was available. These results demonstrate that smartphones can serve as practical wearable devices for delivering biomechanical guidance and supporting movement skill acquisition in children.

As robotic systems become increasingly integrated into daily life, the need for user experience (UX) assessment methods that are both privacy-conscious and suitable for embedded hardware platforms has grown. Traditional UX evaluations relying on vision, audio, or lengthy questionnaires are often intrusive, computationally demanding, or impractical for low-power devices. In this study, we introduce a novel sensor-based method for assessing UX through direct physical interaction. We designed a robot lamp with a force-sensing button interface and conducted a user study involving controlled robot errors. Participants interacted with the lamp during a reading task and rated their UX on a 7-point Likert scale. Using force and time data from button presses, we correlated force and time data to user experience and demographic information. Our results demonstrate the potential of bodily interaction metrics as a viable alternative for UX assessment in human-robot interaction, enabling real-time, embedded, and privacy-aware evaluation of user satisfaction in robotic systems.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) stands out as a prevalent sleep disorder typically identified through Polysomnography. While this study serves as the golden standard for its diagnosis, it is hindered by its time-consuming nature, high costs, and the limited availability of specialized centers, leading to a reduced number of diagnosed patients. Addressing this challenge necessitates the development of more cost-effective and time-efficient solutions, facilitating broader and swifter diagnosis and treatment. Currently, there are methods that enable diagnosis and auto-diagnosis of the disease utilizing body signal monitoring; however, they often lack a focus on screening critical parameters with the most effective predictive models. For that reason, the proposed solution seeks to fill this gap, integrating seamlessly into current clinical practices to provide a rapid pre-diagnosis tool for a larger patient population. Implementation of this solution by healthcare providers could significantly reduce waiting lists for OSA diagnosis, ensuring timely interventions for affected individuals. Besides, for education purposes, it can be useful in the conceptualization of pre-diagnosis devices involving ML models and databases. Furthermore, by making OSA diagnosis research more accessible, this proposal lays the groundwork for future investigations and contributes to the overall advancement of knowledge in the field.

This chapter presents the results regarding the data analysis made for studying the user’s perception and experience when giving descriptive feedback within the product design process. It also includes metadata analysis regarding current trends and technology used for gathering body parameters such as temperature, heart rate, pH, sweat, and accelerations to quantify and compare user interactions during the development of a new product. The data analysis tools used were Pandas, Matplotlib, Numpy, spaCy, and the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) for sentiment analysis. For exploratory analysis, word clouds were created. A total of 536 sentences were analyzed, with an average length of 12 words per sentence. Among these, 52

Assistive technology (AT) design is critical in enabling functionality for people with disabilities, blending essential elements of both practical utility and user experience. Traditionally, AT has successfully addressed core functional needs, such as enabling cursor movement and clicking actions with devices like computer mice. However, a comprehensive approach to AT design also necessitates a thorough consideration of sensory feedback, including tactile sensations, ergonomics, and auditory cues like button click sounds. These aspects are not merely supplementary but are integral to the device’s functionality, enhancing user interaction and long-term comfort, especially for individuals with motor impairments. In this work, we present MouseClicker, a mechatronic AT to surrogate physical agency over a computer mouse and to foster the haptic sensory experience of clicking on it tailored specifically for an individual with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) who faces challenges in using a standard mouse due to severe hand motor impairments. Our design aims at replicating the holistic experience of clicking a mouse, from its functional mechanical actions to its nuanced tactile and auditory feedback. This work details the MouseClicker’s design and reports on an exploratory user study aimed at identifying optimal vibrotactile feedback parameters – such as location, and intensity – that represent mouse button clicks. MouseClicker presents a step forward in AT design by integrating the functionality, sensory feedback, and the overall experience of taking control over non-AT devices.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a respiratory disorder characterized by frequent breathing pauses during sleep. The apnea–hypopnea index is a measure used to assess the severity of sleep apnea and the hourly rate of respiratory events. Despite numerous commercial devices available for apnea diagnosis and early detection, accessibility remains challenging for the general population, leading to lengthy wait times in sleep clinics. Consequently, research on monitoring and predicting OSA has surged. This comprehensive paper reviews devices, emphasizing distinctions among representative apnea devices and technologies for home detection of OSA. The collected articles are analyzed to present a clear discussion. Each article is evaluated according to diagnostic elements, the implemented automation level, and the derived level of evidence and quality rating. The findings indicate that the critical variables for monitoring sleep behavior include oxygen saturation (oximetry), body position, respiratory effort, and respiratory flow. Also, the prevalent trend is the development of level IV devices, measuring one or two signals and supported by prediction software. Noteworthy methods showcasing optimal results involve neural networks, deep learning, and regression modeling, achieving an accuracy of approximately 99%.

Mobility and contamination are two major issues that affect expanding cities. Therefore, there is a need to assess the development of products that fulfill transportation needs while simultaneously reducing environmental impact. This paper presents a comparative study on the use of steel, aluminum, PLA, HDPE and PC, as part of the design process for a last mile vehicle. This vehicle was developed in collaboration with a parcel company, as a response to Mexico City’s urban space problems, such as heavy traffic and lack of parking spots, which leads to delayed deliveries. The prototype was built using steel as the main material; however, the goal of the sustainable assessment was to identify other possible materials which could be used for the structural and case system of the vehicle. The results of this paper could be extrapolated to other products, in order to select materials that show similar levels of performance, while simultaneously reducing the impact on the environment.

Mobility as a key element in the dynamics of any city, a development potentiator and resilience factor, is vital for transforming megalopolis into Smart Cities. However, due to numerous elements that interact within urban mobility, solutions are hard to accomplish. Since public transport is crowded in large cities, the process for buying a ticket must be shortened as much as possible. However, even when machines are used for selling tickets in the Mexican public transportation system, not the entire population has access to the variety of payment methods other than the use of cash. Moreover, there is a wide mixture of others who also interact with the machine such as those involved in maintenance, surveillance, and cash collectors. Based on the information gathered and the steps from the user centered design methodology, a design proposal for improving the interaction was conceived. This paper presents the process that was followed for designing a Ticket Vending Machine (TVM) for Mexico City's public transport, through which human-machine interaction was made simpler and easier to follow compared to previous TVMs and thus refining a key interaction in mobility for a more efficient transport system. The results and the design proposal could be useful for tackling human-machine interaction concerning other products such as automated teller machines, parking ticket machines and other TVMs for public transport in other cities or countries with a similar panorama. The implementation of the user-centered design methodology involves the users at each step of the process to understand and tackle their needs when prototyping and testing are conducted. The methodology boosts the innovation and allows faster implementation of ideas, due to its flexibility throughout the iterative process, which is an advantage compared to linear methodologies where feedback is gathered until the end of the process and not during the development of new products and services.

The preservation of historical documents is a task that requires a multidisciplinary team. Mechanical engineering can make valuable contributions. Historical documents made of paper have unique characteristics that must be considered for their preservation and exhibition. Specially designed encasements have emerged as a solution to meet these requirements. In the present research, a comparative design study was carried out. The study comprises identifying the main functions of the encasements. Subsequently, it is analyzed how the capsules that appear in the literature have solved these functions. With the information obtained, three new encasements were designed for historical documents in Mexico. From the results and design experiences, some insights and design principles were obtained; these can be universally applied.

Lack of water in Mexico City and its peri-urban area has been an increasingly worrying matter in the last few years and has been addressed through multiple government and NGO initiatives such as supplemental delivery via water trucks, rainwater harvesting, intermittence in water services and pipeline network maintenance. However, the rapid and unstructured development of the urban spot has exacerbated the problem, rendering these solutions ineffective. Due to the complexity of the problem, solutions may be more impactful if they focus on fixing or creating effective interactions among the elements of the system — interactions in which the main element is the user. This paper presents a design proposal created from the observations made in Mexico City. Design Thinking was used by understanding the users’ needs and the interactions between the agents through three main phases: Approach and definition of the problem, Prototyping stage and Final proposal explanation. The proposal and research results could be used and extrapolated to other cities and communities around the world, as water availability and quality are a global challenge and can be tackled in similar ways.

Theoretical knowledge is important in all disciplines, but practical knowledge is of utmost importance in many of them, such is the case in engineering, medicine, and architecture. In most of these majors’ instructors focus more on the theoretical area and set aside the practical one. That is why it is important to develop educational tools to improve students’ practice. Medical students at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México were our case of study since we noticed a lack of practical knowledge during their second year at University. In this paper, we present a design methodology of a toy for the students of medicine to exercise and improve their manual precise movements and motor sequencing skills, in order to improve their practical abilities by using it. This methodology emphasizes the importance of specific movements that surgeons do while they perform basic surgical procedures, intending to imitate them when they use the toy. Therefore, procedures like cutting, suturing, exposure, among others were performed by a surgeon, recorded, and analyzed. As a result, it was observed that some movements were repeated in most of the procedures. Based on this, a device was designed so that the user may be able to repeat the movements following a series of audiovisual instructions as a game. To validate its efficiency manual precision tests were used to compare the individual students’ improvement before and after using it. Once the device was built as a toy, 12 second-year medical students took the precision tests, the measured variable was the time they used to complete both tests. Furthermore, they practiced with the toy for 10 days, 6 minutes per day. On the last day, after using it, each student performed the precision tests once again to obtain a quantitative value of their improvement. The time spent by each student to perform the first precision tests were compared to the last after using the toy. The results showed that the execution time was reduced by an average of 53.75 seconds in the first precision test and 45 seconds in the second. This indicates that the use of the toy allows students to improve their manual precision skills, affecting the execution time of tasks that require accurate manual precision. Also, it was observed that the methodology developed could be applied and extrapolated to other disciplines such as engineering, in order to develop similar toys or devices that could enhance manual skills.

Very commonly, a mechanical workpiece manufactured industrially includes more than one machining operation. Even more, it is a common activity of programmers, who make a decision in this regard every time a milling and drilling operation is performed. This research is focused on better understanding the power behavior for face milling and drilling manufacturing operations, and the methodology followed was the design of experiments (DOEs) with the cutting parameters set in combination with toolpath evaluation available in commercial software, having as main goal to get a predictive power equation validated in two ways, linear or nonlinear, and understanding the energy consumption and the quality surface in face milling and final diameter in drilling. The results show that it is possible to find difference in a power demand of 1.52 kW to 3.9 kW in the same workpiece, depending on the operations (face milling or drilling), cutting parameters, and toolpath chosen. Additionally, the equations modelled showed acceptable values to predict the power, withpvalues higher than 0.05 which is the significance level for the nonlinear and linear equations with anRsquare predictive of 98.36. Some conclusions established that optimization of the cutting parameters combined with toolpath strategies can represent an energy consumption optimization higher than 0.21% and the importance to try to find an energy consumption balance when a workpiece has different milling operations.

The energy analysis of injection moulding processes is influenced by complex interactions amongst the moulded part, its material, the injection machine, the process parameters and the environmental conditions. The availability of energy usage analyses that comprehend information on specific materials and machine kind is limited. This paper reports a study that estimates and analyses the power usage profile (PUP), the specific energy consumption (SEC), and the energy distribution at an operation level of two different injected parts made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and produced in a hybrid injection moulding machine. The methodology followed by the authors incorporates an experiment carried out in an industrial facility. A large sample size, and data-acquisition and data post-processing processes to obtain an accurate PUP and SEC are used. A breakdown of the energy consumed by the injection moulding process of the parts studied at an operation level using Sankey diagrams is discussed. The study results are used to identify strategies to reduce the energy consumed by the processes. The methodology employed, and the strategies reported could be used with other plastic parts regardless of the material and machine used. The results reported are new experimental data useful input for theoretical models.

Enterprises must become ‘sensing, smart and sustainable (S3)’ to face global challenges related to local, national and global market dynamics. Therefore, reconceptualisation and redesign in these enterprises must accommodate emergent technologies, new practices and strategies. In this sense, enterprises have used new product development as a strategy for remaining competitive in the marketplace; thus, they can provide a new generation of products offering solutions to contemporary social problems and responding to changing consumer demands. These new-generation products are mostly technology-based and consider sustainable objectives. In this context, concepts such as sensing, smart and sustainable products (S3 products) have emerged to satisfy different social requirements. Therefore, this work focuses on providing a reference framework that presents a systematic process for the development of S3 products. This reference framework is based on the integrated product, process and manufacturing system development reference model. The main objective of this work is to fill the gap vis-à-vis the current lack of design roadmaps that permit the development of this new generation of products in S3 enterprises. The development of a reconfigurable micro-machine tool is presented as that of an S3 product.

This paper reports the development of a method to improve practical skills. The developed method arises from the observations made to the second-year students of Medicine degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in order to improve the learning of practical skills used in the “Introduction to Surgery” course. However, the results obtained can be extrapolated to any profession that requires the usage of manual tools or fine and precise movements of hands. In the case of engineering, the proposed method can be applied to basic courses in electronics, technical drawing, manufacturing engineering, among others. As well as it can be used for specialized training in tasks such as welding, conventional machining, handling of hazardous materials or any other manual activity that requires precision. As a result, a methodology is presented to improve the learning of fine motor skills in a person, this allows developing of his/her professional activities in a fast and accurate way.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is defined as the process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, in contrast to subtractive or forming manufacturing methodologies. In studies of energy consumption in AM systems reported in the literature, the electric energy consumed by different technologies was measured directly in the main electrical supply wires of the machines, which does not represent the process energy consumption, because there are peripheral devices that do not have an influence on the process. In order to generate a better approach to the energy consumption of the AM process, this paper presents a proposal to measure the energy consumption directly in the system stage in which the AM processes are performed: preparing the material for extrusion, deposition, selection, gluing, curing, and so on, obtaining the geometry of a layer defined by an area with a certain thickness, and carrying out bonding between the layers to form a solid part. Because the combination of material and manufacturing processes determine the mechanical properties of a built part and because different materials and processes could be used to obtain these mechanical properties with different energy consumption values, the authors suggest mathematical models for three AM processes (material extrusion, vat photopolymerization, and material jetting) which predict the energy consumption and then compare the values with their experimental results, obtaining a difference of less than 10%, and find the parameters which define the differences in energy consumption among the processes.

Since 1976 the Mechanical Design Center of UNAM (CDMIT) has worked under the premise that experiential learning is a scheme that substantially helps in the task of educating engineers. The work of the CDMIT over the years has yielded good results that have underpinned the education process of its engineering students. Using real-world sponsored projects to integrate engineering knowledge taught in the classroom is not a novel idea though; CDMIT’s method of organizing teams of students essentially follows Kolb’s framework of learning through experience (LTE). The CDMIT implemented a way of bringing real-world engineering projects closer to the students, sometimes emulating such experiences in the classroom and some other times via the realization of senior capstone projects that involve the design and manufacture of automatic machine systems that are developed to either displace intensive manual work needed in production lines or to avoid importing expensive pieces of production equipment. This paper reports on the results and impact that these design projects and application of the LTE model have had on the students’ education. On the other hand, Mexico is also experiencing new opportunities and challenges; the country became the fourth world largest exporter of automobiles not long ago, in 2014. The automotive companies established in Mexico are mainly looking for engineers that have a generic and solid technical background in the core knowledge areas of the curriculum, this allows their training and development departments to better guide young engineers towards specific strategic technical fields that are considered important. The automotive industry boom, besides creating new job positions, has helped Mexico to come onboard the train of future transportation technologies. This trend has been particularly appealing to young engineers who envisage great business opportunities. Under this scenario, the LTE method has therefore to be strengthened in different ways. The second part of the paper explains how the CDMIT is embedding the innovation process in the curricula; the final goal is to help students learn the tools that will allow them to develop a design ability, emphasizing innovation and ingenuity.

In this article a GHG and energy analysis for the plastic injection process of an ABS medium sized injected part carried out in a hybrid injection molding machine is reported. A power consumption process pattern for an ABS medium-size part is defined as well as the energy usage of components, the energy used for the injection process is calculated for the injection cycle and for the process setup. The reported study includes a hybrid machine analysis working under an electric network that relies mainly on thermoelectric energy generation. The GHG emissions assessment was estimated using the 2015 emission factor applied for Mexico. The results provide new experimental data for ABS plastic injected parts in hybrid injection machines. This paper describes the outcomes of a GHG emissions and energy assessment for an ABS medium-sized injected part carried out in a HIMM at UNAM. The approach followed by the authors in this assessment was aimed at providing information about the energy usage and GHG emissions for the process and the part. The main contribution of this paper is the insight related to energy usage indicators in the process, the energy usage and the GHG emissions within components. The product used as a case study and the results of its GHG emissions and energy assessment are presented.