In this systematic umbrella review we aggregate the current knowledge of how virtual and augmented reality technologies are applicable to and impact remote learning in higher education; specifically, how they impact such learning outcomes as performance and engagement in all stages of higher education from course preparation to student evaluation and grading. This review was done as part of a state wide research effort of Latvia, to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and specifically to provide a framework for a technological transformation of education in this context. In this work we search the Scopus and Web of Science databases for articles describing the use of virtual and/or augmented reality technologies in remote learning for higher education and their impact on learning outcomes. We identified 68 articles from which, after multiple screening and eligibility phases, nine review articles were left for extraction phase in which 30 structural elements with corresponding interventions and measured effects were extracted. Of these, 24 interventions had a measured effect on student performance (11 positive, seven negative, six no impact) and six interventions had a measured effect on student engagement (all six positive).

Smart manufacturing and smart factories depend on automation and robotics, whereas human–robot collaboration (HRC) contributes to increasing the effectiveness and productivity of today’s and future factories. Industrial robots especially in HRC settings can be hazardous if safety is not addressed properly. In this review, we look at the collaboration levels of HRC and what safety actions have been used to address safety. One hundred and ninety-three articles were identified from which, after screening and eligibility stages, 46 articles were used for the extraction stage. Predefined parameters such as: devices, algorithms, collaboration level, safety action, and standards used for HRC were extracted. Despite close human and robot collaboration, 25% of all reviewed studies did not use any safety actions, and more than 50% did not use any standard to address safety issues. This review shows HRC trends and what kind of functionalities are lacking in today’s HRC systems. HRC systems can be a tremendously complex process; therefore, proper safety mechanisms must be addressed at an early stage of development.

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When a person tries to press with a finger, other fingers of the hand produce force unintentionally. We explored this phenomenon of enslaving during unintentional force drifts in the course of continuous force production by pairs of fingers of a hand. Healthy subjects performed accurate force production tasks by finger pairs Index-Middle, Middle-Ring, and Ring-Little with continuous visual feedback on the combined force of the instructed (master) fingers or of the non-instructed (enslaved) fingers. The feedback scale was adjusted to ensure that the subjects did not know the difference between these two, randomly presented, conditions. Across all finger pairs, enslaved force showed a drift upward under feedback on the master finger force, and master force showed a drift downward under feedback on the enslaved finger force. The subjects were unaware of the force drifts, which could reach over 50% of the initial force magnitude over 15 s. Across all conditions, the index of enslaving increased by about 50% over the trial duration. The initial moment of force magnitude in pronation-supination was not a consistent predictor of the force drift magnitude. These results suggest that during continuous force production enslaving increases with time, possibly due to spread of excitation over cortical finger representations or other mechanisms such as increased synchronization of firing of alpha-motoneurons innervating different compartments of extrinsic flexors. These changes in enslaving, interpreted at the level of control with referent coordinates for the fingers, can contribute to a variety of phenomena including unintentional force drifts.