Interactive simulator for e-Learning environments: a teaching software for health care professionals

There is an established tradition of cardiovascular simulation tools, but the application of this kind of technology in the e-Learning arena is a novel approach. This paper presents an e-Learning environment aimed at teaching the interaction of cardiovascular and lung systems to health-care professionals. Heart-lung interaction must be analyzed while assisting patients with severe respiratory problems or with heart failure in intensive care unit. Such patients can be assisted by mechanical ventilatory assistance or by thoracic artificial lung. "In silico" cardiovascular simulator was experimented during a training course given to graduate students of the School of Specialization in Cardiology at \u27Sapienza\u27 University in Rome. The training course employed CARDIOSIM(C): a numerical simulator of the cardiovascular system. Such simulator is able to reproduce pathophysiological conditions of patients affected by cardiovascular and/or lung disease. In order to study the interactions among the cardiovascular system, the natural lung and the thoracic artificial lung (TAL), the numerical model of this device has been implemented. After having reproduced a patient\u27s pathological condition, TAL model was applied in parallel and hybrid model during the training course. Results obtained during the training course show that TAL parallel assistance reduces right ventricular end systolic (diastolic) volume, but increases left ventricular end systolic (diastolic) volume. The percentage changes induced by hybrid TAL assistance on haemodynamic variables are lower than those produced by parallel assistance. Only in the case of the mean pulmonary arterial pressure, there is a percentage reduction which, in case of hybrid assistance, is greater (about 40%) than in case of parallel assistance (20-30%). At the end of the course, a short questionnaire was submitted to students in order to assess the quality of the course. The feedback obtained was positive, showing good results with respect to the degree of students\u27 learning and the ease of use of the software simulator

The development of a virtual cycling simulator

Cycling is one of the current thirteen elite sports in Hong Kong. Despite cycling is one of the well known activities in the world and has numerous advantages for health, it is still far from popular in Hong Kong. In this research, a virtual cycling simulator is developed for exercise and entertainment purpose, and for promoting the cycling activity. The hardware of the cycling simulator consists of four major units including a bike platform, an actuation unit, a sensing unit and a display unit. The control system receives signals from the sensing unit and controls the motions of the actuation unit. It also computes and renders the virtual environment in real-time thereby providing the experience of cycling on different terrain models

New Developments in Simulation-Based Harbour Crane Training

This paper presents the efforts that have been made during the development of a set of harbour training simulators to improve their quality. The paper focuses on two main research lines: the improvement of complex physical systems involved in the simulation and the analysis of hardware architecture solutions. Cable-based hoist systems and bulk materials are systems present in different harbour equipment and are usually simulated with poor quality due to their complexity. In this paper physics-based models for the interactive simulation of these systems are proposed and applied to real cases. Also, different hardware simulator architectures are analysed and different approaches are proposed to the problem of choosing the devices for a simulator

Virtual laboratories for education in science, technology, and engineering: A review

Within education, concepts such as distance learning, and open universities, are now becoming more widely used for teaching and learning. However, due to the nature of the subject domain, the teaching of Science, Technology, and Engineering are still relatively behind when using new technological approaches (particularly for online distance learning). The reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that these fields often require laboratory exercises to provide effective skill acquisition and hands-on experience. Often it is difficult to make these laboratories accessible for online access. Either the real lab needs to be enabled for remote access or it needs to be replicated as a fully software-based virtual lab. We argue for the latter concept since it offers some advantages over remotely controlled real labs, which will be elaborated further in this paper. We are now seeing new emerging technologies that can overcome some of the potential difficulties in this area. These include: computer graphics, augmented reality, computational dynamics, and virtual worlds. This paper summarizes the state of the art in virtual laboratories and virtual worlds in the fields of science, technology, and engineering. The main research activity in these fields is discussed but special emphasis is put on the field of robotics due to the maturity of this area within the virtual-education community. This is not a coincidence; starting from its widely multidisciplinary character, robotics is a perfect example where all the other fields of engineering and physics can contribute. Thus, the use of virtual labs for other scientific and non-robotic engineering uses can be seen to share many of the same learning processes. This can include supporting the introduction of new concepts as part of learning about science and technology, and introducing more general engineering knowledge, through to supporting more constructive (and collaborative) education and training activities in a more complex engineering topic such as robotics. The objective of this paper is to outline this problem space in more detail and to create a valuable source of information that can help to define the starting position for future research