Browsing by Author "Peres, Emanuel"
Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- An autonomous intelligent gateway infrastructure for in-field processing in precision viticulturePublication . Peres, Emanuel; Fernandes, Miguel A.; Morais, Raul; Cunha, Carlos R.; López, Juan A.; Matos, Samuel R.; Ferreira, Paulo Jorge S.G.; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos SantosWireless sensor networks have found multiple applications in precision viticulture. Despite the steady progress in sensing devices and wireless technologies, some of the crucial items needed to improve the usability and scalability of the networks, such as gateway infrastructures and in-field processing, have been comparatively neglected. This paper describes the hardware, communication capabilities and software architecture of an intelligent autonomous gateway, designed to provide the necessary middleware between locally deployed sensor networks and a remote location within the whole-farm concept. This solar-powered infrastructure, denoted by iPAGAT (Intelligent Precision Agriculture Gateway), runs an aggregation engine that fills a local database with environmental data gathered by a locally deployed ZigBee wireless sensor network. Aggregated data are then retrieved by external queries over the built-in data integration system. In addition, embedded communication capabilities, including Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11 and GPRS, allow local and remote users to access both gateway and remote data, as well as the Internet, and run site-specific management tools using authenticated smartphones. Field experiments provide convincing evidence that iPAGAT represents an important step forward in the development of distributed service-oriented information systems for precision viticulture applications.
- Contextualized ubiquity: a new opportunity for rendering business information and servicesPublication . Cunha, Carlos R.; Peres, Emanuel; Morais, Raul; Bessa, Maximino; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos SantosStating that information and services are ubiquitous, means that they are available anywhere, anytime. The development of mobile-devices with wireless network-access capabilities, together with the decrease in network-traffic costs and the proliferation of free wireless hotspots, makes the use of mobile-devices, as Internet access tools, increasingly common and attractive. With novel forms of presenting information and to provide new ways to interact with consumers, new business strategies can be boosted, in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and m-commerce. This paper describes a different approach to the relationship between customers and business-providers, based on contextualization mechanisms located in commercial products, which in turn acts as a gateway to static tag-embedded information as well as web-based information and services. A wine integrated management system, called SIGPV, is presented as a proof-of-concept, enumerating some of possible major business and CRM benefits.
- Contextualized ubiquity: a new opportunity for rendering business information and servicesPublication . Cunha, Carlos R.; Peres, Emanuel; Morais, Raul; Bessa, Maximino; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos SantosUbiquitous information and services means that they are available anywhere and anytime. The development of mobile-devices with wireless network-access capabilities, together with the decrease in network-traffic costs and the proliferation of free wireless hotspots, makes the use of mobile-devices, as Internet access tools, increasingly common and attractive. With novel forms of presenting information and to provide new ways to interact with consumers, new business strategies can be boost, in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and E-Commerce. This paper describes a different approach to the relationship between customers and business-providers, based on contextualization mechanisms, located in user-consuming real-world objects. A Wine Integrated Management System, called SIGPV, is presented as a proof-of-concept, enumerating some of possible major business and CRM benefits.
- Empowering deaf-hearing communication: exploring synergies between predictive and generative ai-based strategies towards (portuguese) sign language interpretationPublication . Adão, Telmo; Oliveira, João; Shahrabadi, Somayeh; Jesus, Hugo; Fernandes, Marco Paulo Sampaio; Costa, Angelo; Gonçalves, Martinho Fradeira; Lopez, Miguel A.G.; Peres, Emanuel; Magalhães, Luis G.Communication between Deaf and hearing individuals remains a persistent challenge requiring attention to foster inclusivity. Despite notable efforts in the development of digital solutions for sign language recognition (SLR), several issues persist, such as cross-platform interoperability and strategies for tokenizing signs to enable continuous conversations and coherent sentence construction. To address such issues, this paper proposes a non-invasive Portuguese Sign Language (Língua Gestual Portuguesa or LGP) interpretation system-as-a-service, leveraging skeletal posture sequence inference powered by long-short term memory (LSTM) architectures. To address the scarcity of examples during machine learning (ML) model training, dataset augmentation strategies are explored. Additionally, a buffer-based interaction technique is introduced to facilitate LGP terms tokenization. This technique provides real-time feedback to users, allowing them to gauge the time remaining to complete a sign, which aids in the construction of grammatically coherent sentences based on inferred terms/words. To support human-like conditioning rules for interpretation, a large language model (LLM) service is integrated. Experiments reveal that LSTM-based neural networks, trained with 50 LGP terms and subjected to data augmentation, achieved accuracy levels ranging from 80% to 95.6%. Users unanimously reported a high level of intuition when using the buffer-based interaction strategy for terms/words tokenization. Furthermore, tests with an LLM—specifically ChatGPT—demonstrated promising semantic correlation rates in generated sentences, comparable to expected sentences.
- Enhancing tourism through viticulture enterprises in Douro Region: The Inov@Douro modelPublication . Cunha, Carlos R.; Peres, Emanuel; Morais, Raul; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos SantosThis paper describes a business and technological model proposal, known as Inov@Douro, intended to support and to promote competitive and sustained precision agriculture practices in the Portuguese Douro Region. Our approach is based on a distributed cooperative network, tailored to meet the specific needs of viticulture enterprises which also explore tourism as a valuable national and international business source. We present the Inov@Douro model from the knowledge generation point-of-view, intended to support the multidisciplinary concept of a cooperation approach among regional partners. This model aims to represent a new working style for this unique region. As a guideline to attain the implementation of such a model, information technology and infrastructures tools are discussed in order to promote precision agriculture practices while giving valuable and dynamic tourist information to the general public.
- A framework for wireless sensor networks management for precision viticulture and agriculture based on IEEE 1451 standardPublication . Fernandes, Miguel A.; Matos, Samuel G.; Peres, Emanuel; Cunha, Carlos R.; López, Juan A.; Ferreira, Paulo Jorge S.G.; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos Santos; Morais, RaulPrecision viticulture (PV) and precision agriculture (PA) requires the acquisition and proce ssing of a vast collection of data coming typically from large scale and heterogeneous sensor networks. Unfortunately, sensor integration is far from being simple due to the number of incompatible network specifications and platforms. The adoption of a common, standard communication interfa ce would allow the engineer to abstract the relation between the sensor and the network. This would reduce the development efforts and emerge as an important step towards the adoption of ‘‘plug-and-play’’ technology in PA/PV sensor networks. This paper explores this need and introduces a framework for smart data acquisition in PA/PV that relies on the IEEE 1451 family of standards, which addresses the transducer-to -network interoperability issues. The framework includes a ZigBee end device (sMPWiNodeZ), as an IEEE 1451 WTIM (Wireless Transducer Interface Module), and an IEEE 1451 NCAP (Network Capable Application Processor) that acts as gateway to an information service provider and WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) coordinator. The paper discusses the proposed IEEE 1451 system architecture and its benefits in PA/PV and closes with results/lessons learned from in-field trials towards smarter WSN.
- Multi-temporal analysis of forestry and coastal environments using UASsPublication . Pádua, Luís; Hruška, Jonáš; Bessa, José; Adão, Telmo; Martins, Luís; Gonçalves, José Alberto; Peres, Emanuel; Sousa, António M.R.; Castro, João Paulo; Sousa, Joaquim J.Due to strong improvements and developments achieved in the last decade, it is clear that applied research using remote sensing technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide a flexible, efficient, non-destructive, and non-invasive means of acquiring geoscientific data, especially aerial imagery. Simultaneously, there has been an exponential increase in the development of sensors and instruments that can be installed in UAV platforms. By combining the aforementioned factors, unmanned aerial system (UAS) setups composed of UAVs, sensors, and ground control stations, have been increasingly used for remote sensing applications, with growing potential and abilities. This paper's overall goal is to identify advantages and challenges related to the use of UAVs for aerial imagery acquisition in forestry and coastal environments for preservation/prevention contexts. Moreover, the importance of monitoring these environments over time will be demonstrated. To achieve these goals, two case studies using UASs were conducted. The first focuses on phytosanitary problem detection and monitoring of chestnut tree health (Padrela region, Valpaços, Portugal). The acquired high-resolution imagery allowed for the identification of tree canopy cover decline by means of multi-temporal analysis. The second case study enabled the rigorous and non-evasive registry process of topographic changes that occurred in the sandspit of Cabedelo (Douro estuary, Porto, Portugal) in different time periods. The obtained results allow us to conclude that the UAS constitutes a low-cost, rigorous, and fairly autonomous form of remote sensing technology, capable of covering large geographical areas and acquiring high precision data to aid decision support systems in forestry preservation and coastal monitoring applications. Its swift evolution makes it a potential big player in remote sensing technologies today and in the near future.
- PROMORE: a procedural modeler of virtual rural environments with artificial dataset generation capabilities for remote sensing contextsPublication . Adão, Telmo; Cerqueira, João; Adão, Miguel; Silva, Nuno; Pascoal, David; Magalhães, Luís G.; Barros, Tiago; Premebida, Cristiano; Nunes, Urbano J.; Peres, Emanuel; Morais, RaulRemote sensing (RS) is a rapidly evolving field that facilitates the study of phenomena on the Earth’s surface. Through various platforms, including satellites, manned aircraft, and remotely piloted aerial vehicles (RPAV), RS has been strategically applied to critical sectors like agriculture and forestry, which are essential for humanity’s sustenance. Key applications include crops classification, yield estimation and livestock monitoring and quantification. In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), the development of deep learning (DL) models for such applications often requires extensive field data collection and labor-intensive image labeling, which are both time-consuming and resource-intensive. To address these challenges, this paper presents Procedural Modeling of Rural Environments (PROMORE), a parameterizable, ontology driven system designed to generate 3D virtual environments encompassing forestry, farmland – mainly focused on vineyards – and village settings. This system also implements functionalities to automate the extraction of training data for deep learning applications in remote sensing, with the declared aim of providing complementary capabilities to data augmentation techniques, encompassing both traditional methods (e.g., flips, rotations, zooming) and advanced approaches such as generative adversarial networks (GANs). By simulating RPAV flights and managing virtual object visibility, PROMORE enables the automatic labeling, delineation, and highlighting of elements of interest (e.g., vine plants, trees, buildings), facilitating the generation of datasets tailored for tasks such as semantic segmentation, and object detection.
- The Inov@Douro cooperative network: shaping collaboration among Douro Region viticulture companies focusing tourismPublication . Cunha, Carlos R.; Peres, Emanuel; Morais, Raul; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos SantosThis paper describes a business and technological model proposal, known as Inov@Douro, intended to support and to promote competitive and sustained precision agriculture practices in the Portuguese Douro Region. Our approach is based on a distributed cooperative network, tailored to meet the specific needs of viticulture enterprises which also explore tourism as a valuable national and international business source. Instead of focusing on operational issues, such as remote sensing and data transmission, among others, we present the Inov@Douro model from the knowledge generation point-of-view, intended to support the multidisciplinary concept of a cooperation approach among regional partners. As a result, this collaborative approach might be the most suited technological tool to promote precision agriculture sustainability practices based on a symbiotic cooperation with the tourism sector. The Inov@Douro model aims to represent a new working style for this unique region, where the concept of public and private information is a key feature to achieve the desired success as a knowledge network. As a guideline to attain the implementation of such a model, information technology and infrastructures tools are discussed in order to promote precision agriculture practices while giving valuable and dynamic tourist information to the general public.
- The use of mobile devices with multi-tag technologies for an overall contextualized vineyard managementPublication . Cunha, Carlos R.; Peres, Emanuel; Morais, Raul; Oliveira, Ana A.; Matos, Samuel G.; Fernandes, Miguel A.; Ferreira, Paulo Jorge S.G.; Reis, Manuel José Cabral dos SantosThis paper describes a Viticulture Service-Oriented Framework (VSOF) which turns around context elements or tags that are placed in the field and which can be decoded by mobile devices such as mobile phones or PDAs. The tags are used to automatically associate a field location to the relevant database tables or records and also to access contextual information or services. By pointing a mobile device to a tag, the viticulturalist may download data such as climatic data or upload information such as disease and pest incidence in a simple way, without having to provide coordinates or any other references, and without having to return to a central office. This work is part of an effort to implement a large-scale distributed cooperative network in the Douro Demarcated Region in Northeast Portugal, a region in which the effort makes particular sense due to the extremely variable topography and mesoclimates. The possibility of exchanging contextualized information and accessing contextualized services in the field, using well-known devices such as cell phones, may contribute to increase the rate of adoption of information technology in viticulture, and contribute to more efficient and closer-to-the-crops practices.