Novel Manufacturing Methods and Materials for UHF RFID Tags in Identification and Sensing Applications

The continuously increasing amount of radio frequency identification tags needed in our daily lives, not forgetting the broadly widening concept of the Internet of Things, sets high demands on the tag materials selection and manufacturing processes. The huge amount of needed tags requires environmentally sustainable material selection together with the requirement of very low cost. In addition, the manufacturing capacity needs to be very high, hence high-volume capable production methods are needed. In addition to identification applications, also sensing applications established with radio frequency identification tags are of great interest in many application fields.This thesis reports the possibilities of radio frequency identification tags manufactured on eco-friendly substrate materials using conductive inks and photonic sintering. The used manufacturing methods use raw materials efficiently. Especially brush-painting together with photonic sintering is capable for low-cost high-volume manufacturing. In addition, the possibilities of radio frequency identification tags for humidity sensing applications are studied.The results of this thesis confirmed that the materials and processes studied in this thesis are suitable for environmentally friendly low-cost radio frequency identification tag manufacturing. Especially brush-painting of regular screen printing conductive inks, both silver and copper oxide ink, on wood and cardboard substrates combined with photonic sintering confirmed to be a very good choice for the application area focused in this thesis. Furthermore, especially the use of screen printable copper oxide ink for identification applications is a very low-cost possibility. The results showed that humidity sensing with passive ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification tags, which were manufactured with regular screen printing silver ink on wood substrate without any coating on the tag, is a very promising approach

Experiences from the First Implementation Round of Two Electronics Courses Utilizing Flipped Learning Method

During the past years we have witnessed various development trends in learning. More and more the learning has moved online thus making it independent of time and place, students’ responsibility of their own learning has increased, methods that promote active learning have gained more interest as they result in better learning results, and the role of a teacher has shifted towards a facilitator of learning. Consequently, the flipped learning pedagogical approach has become more common in recent years as it is one way to answer these trends. This concept paper introduces two studies of practice in which flipped learning approach was implemented for the first time in a bachelor level university course of electronics at Tampere University (TU) during the academic year 2021 – 2022. The structure of the flipped courses consisted of online pre-class study materials and assignments, face-to-face learning events, various individual and group learning assignments and so-called prime time small group meetings with the teacher. Flexibility and versability of the learning experiences, both-way feedback possibilities as well as a combination of individual and collaborative face-to-face and online learning were emphasized in the course design. According to the feedback many students felt that this flipped learning approach promoted learning and encouraged to study evenly throughout the entire course. Furthermore, the teachers' thoughts after the first implementation round are considered e.g., which parts and practices were successes, and which need further development. In addition, thoughts about teachers' workload and institute's support in utilizing flipped learning method are shared.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Designing flipped learning implementations for electronics courses

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic during year 2020 many higher education institutes were forced to switch to remote teaching on a very short notice. The rapid change from on-campus to remote teaching showed us that effective remote teaching needs totally new forms of course implementations. The idea that one just moves the on-campus teaching to a distance learning platform without changing anything else was found to be inefficient and passivating for students. Flipped Learning Method (FLM) has been successfully utilized in many fields, including engineering education. The students’ learning is enhanced and deepened when they study the basic concepts of a subject remotely in the place and time that suits them, and the face-to-face time is reserved for issues on the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. In engineering studies, the possibility to utilize technology and technological tools are important. Nowadays the technological tools, such as the internet, simulation devices and various pieces of software, are widely available to students thus enabling and supporting the FLM. The FLM has been taken into use during couple of recent years in Tampere University. The COVID-19 situation gave us a trigger to adopt FLM in our courses. We believe that FLM is very suitable to hybrid teaching, where remote and on-campus teaching are combined in the same course implementation. In this paper, we will report our experiences on the rapid change to remote teaching on year 2020, the reasons for taking FLM into use, and the FLM planning and designing process of our courses.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Utilizing Zoom-stamps in synchronous online workshop implementations

In engineering education, and in work life in general, the past two years have been struggling with Covid-19 pandemic. When considering studying, learning, and working, the teachers and other facilitators have been forced to create innovative methods for online working, aiming to good work efficiency, student engagement, and learning results. Along the development of various online working possibilities, it has been noticed that especially interaction among participants in synchronous online sessions is a challenge. Even if some participants are actively discussing and working in online sessions, some participants remain very silent and indistinguishable. Furthermore, even though the technical tools for online working and learning have developed rapidly during the recent years, technical problems still exist quite often. There are numerous ways for increasing interaction in online sessions, including, for example, asking questions, using camera, utilizing chat or third-party applications like Padlet, and small group discussions in breakout rooms. In this paper, we will present how we utilized Zoom-stamps in two types of workshops. The basic idea in utilizing Zoom-stamps was to increase interaction and communication among participants and help them to further develop ideas created and discussed in the workshop. The lessons learnt from the first type implementations were considered when planning the second type implementations. We will describe the pros and cons of the Zoom-stamp utilization in synchronous online working as well as share our future development ideas.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Recognizing swallowing movements using a textile-based device

Dysphagia can stem from various etiologies and cause several serious complications. Instrumental evaluation methods for swallowing require special equipment not available everywhere. Thus, an instrumental means to evaluate swallowing that could be used outside a hospital setting would be critical. Dual-axis accelerometers have been utilized in earlier research to recognize swallowing movements. However, no textile-based approaches have been reported. In this study, we developed a textile-based prototype device for identifying swallowing movements. The device used accelerometers and gyroscopes, with eight sensors attached to the fabric. Two female participants were asked to perform two tasks while wearing the device around their neck: sitting still and taking 10 sips of water. The sensor attached to the middle of the thyroid notch level and the two sensors horizontally aligned to both sides of the hyoid bone level were the most accurate in recognizing swallowing movements. No sensor alone could recognize all swallows. However, all the swallows were identified using the combined data from the sensors. Thus, based on these preliminary results, it seems like a textile-based device using accelerometers and gyroscopes could identify swallowing movements.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Rapid switch from face-to-face workshops to online workshops

During 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic required many higher education institutes, including engineering education, to quickly switch all face-to-face lessons and meetings to remote meetings and teaching sessions. This situation forced us all to rapidly create new ways to interact, work and study remotely. We had planned to organize five face-to-face multiprofessional ideation workshops in spring 2020 to create unbiased and innovative ideas related to smart clothing. COVID-19 forced us to replace the planned face-to-face workshops with five online workshops. We chose one video meeting platform for that purpose. Overall, online workshops proved to be an effective way to gather diverse ideas. The work went smoothly, although the video meeting platform was new to some participants. Online workshops are an easy way to bring together people regardless of geographical distances. Even though the organized workshops were for research purposes, we think similar workshops are very suitable for online teaching as well. We believe online workshops will be here to stay after COVID-19, as they are a great option when hybrid teaching and working take place.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Technology-related Challenges in Smart Clothing-Viewpoints from Ideation Workshops

Smart clothing is a booming, growing technology and business branch of wearables. Its users range from sports and entertainment customers to military, and new applications can be found, especially in the care sector, for example, in gamification for health and well-being. We organized 5 ideation workshops to gather ideas about the potential users and uses of smart clothing. The participants brought up several types of technology-related challenges during the workshops. This article introduces these challenges. The results were analyzed using inductive qualitative content analysis. Based on the gathered data, the main challenge groups were found to be ethical concerns, operating features and the technology's reliability, and, for example, the lack of a need-based and user-oriented design process.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Asiantuntijanäkemyksiä älyvaatteesta puhetta tukevan ja korvaavan viestinnän apuvälineenä

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E-textiles Assisting Healthcare, Rehabilitation, and Well-being - To whom, for What, and How?

The use of e-textiles in healthcare, rehabilitation, and well-being (referred here as assistive e-textiles) is spreading for its obvious benefits, such as monitoring of physiological signals and vital signs. Although there are versatile studies on individual applications of assistive e-textiles, there are not many that include in the design process a wide variety of stakeholders who have roles in development or use of assistive technology. To provide stakeholder-oriented design knowledge regarding the development of assistive e-textiles, we organized five multidisciplinary ideation workshops for 50 participants with different backgrounds and roles. Many distinct ideas were created that targets a diverse set of users from different age groups, ability levels and even for non-human actors. Participants came up with ideas related to work environment, rehabilitation, healthcare, and daily life. This article presents those findings and discusses how those can help designers and researchers in the field.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Jumpy the Tiger : lasten sähkökirjan kuvitus

Opinnäytetyöni aiheena oli pikkulasten sähköisen kirjan kuvittaminen. Tavoitteenani oli saada aikaan hyväntuulinen ja selkeä kuvallinen tarina ja tuoda kuvituksella hieman lisää sävyjä muuten hyvin yksinkertaiseen kertomukseen. Testasin myös samalla tilaajan kehittelemää sähkökirjojen julkaisualustaa, sekä annoin tilaajalle palautetta ja kehitysehdotuksia kuvittajan näkökulmasta.The subject of my final thesis was illustrating an electric book for small children. My goal was to create a good-humored and clear illustration that would give a little bit of extra content to the otherwise very simple story. I also tested a new publishing platform for e-books that my client was creating, shared my user experience as an illustrator and gave him feedback