Mechanical Design and Brain Science

Academic unit or major

Undergraduate major in Mechanical Engineering

Instructor(s)

Takako Yoshida

Class Format

Lecture (Face-to-face)

Media-enhanced courses

-

Day of week/Period
(Classrooms)

1-2 Thu

Class

-

Course Code

MEC.L332

Number of credits

100

Course offered

2024

Offered quarter

2Q

Syllabus updated

Mar 14, 2025

Language

Japanese

Syllabus

Course overview and goals

The objective of this course is to understand the application of basic science for strategic mechanical-systems design and optimization of the human user’s experience. Students learn about successful and unsuccessful man-machine interfaces including virtual reality, assistive products, sensory substitution devices, and brain machine interface. Students then learn the basic background of brain science and biological systems to understand the success or failure of these interfaces. The course contains experimental demonstrations to hack one’s own body and sensations to understand the human experience under consideration. Through this course, students will understand the basic cognitive science of the human user’s subjective experience, and have an idea of how to design a mechanical system so that it optimizes the end-user’s sensation, or Kansei. Following is the table of contents
1. Human sensation and perception basic
2. Psychophysics –The correspondence between physics and psychological phenomena
3. The limitations of the human brain to process information (capacity limitation), and attention/inattention. Human information process capacity and attention/inattention
4. Human body control system and internal model, sense of agency
5. To understand action-feedback relationship learning and related topics including brain plasticity, critical period, to optimize the human-machine integrated system usability.
6. Design of illusion-based devices and systems
7. Self and others recognition systems, and the theory of mind

Course description and aims

Tabel of the goal of the course is as follows.

1. To understand basic human sensation and perception systems and the varieties of illusions that human information display systems rely on.
2. To understand psychophysics to bridge physics and psychological phenomena and to understand it’s engineering applications.
3. To understand the human brain information process capacity, as well as the visual display system and visual entertainment that relies on human attention and inattention.
4. To understand action-feedback relationship learning and related topics including brain plasticity, critical period, to optimize the human-machine integrated system usability.
5. To understand the brain and body mechanisms to control human body movement. In addition, to understand mechanical system designs to cooperate with human body organs so that they are psychologically merged into one for the human user to achieve self-body like usability and sensations.
6. To understand the different varieties of display and virtual-reality system designs which are controlled with the user’s active body movement, and their past, current, and future directions.
7. To understand the basic application of the human self- and other- recognition process through multimodal sensory systems which include vision, haptic, and proprioception. To understand social problems and current debate on the autonomy and self-sensation of artificial systems including AI and robots.

Keywords

Biological system, human body movement, perception, cognition, brain, man-machine interface, virtual reality

Competencies

• Specialist skills
• Intercultural skills
• Communication skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Practical and/or problem-solving skills
• This class aims at learning 6 and 7 of learning objective.

Class flow

The course contains lectures and discussions. Sometimes students will also have assignments.

Course schedule/Objectives

Study advice (preparation and review)

To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.

Textbook(s)

N/A

Reference books, course materials, etc.

Handouts.

Evaluation methods and criteria

Assignment(40%), and final exam(60%). When the final exam is not available, the final assignment given during the lecture can be replaced by the final exam.

Related courses

• MEC.L331 ： Basic Bioengineering
• MEC.I312 ： Modeling and Control Theory
• LAH.S105 ： Psychology A
• LAH.S205 ： Psychology B
• LAS.B102 ： Fundamental Life Science 1-2
• LAH.H302 ： Arts C, Esthetics C

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge and interest in psychology, cognitive science, media art, philosophy, and control theory is preferable.
Students who enrolled after April 1, 2023 (23B-) cannot take this course.

Other

Students can ask questions even after the class.