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- Programming Language Choices for Introductory Computer Science Courses: Global Trends from the 2023 Shanghai RankingPublication . Gomes, João Pedro; Monteiro, Redney; Moreira, André; Pinho, Anabela; Mendonça, Vítor; Cunha, Carlos R.This study examines the selection of programming languages in the first two introductory computer science courses at top universities globally, emphasizing their distribution, progression, and regional variations. Data were gathered from 150 programming courses across 83 institutions ranked in the Shanghai 2023 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects for Computer Science and Engineering. The analysis reveals that Python is the primary language used in CS1 (32.5%), while Java dominates CS2 (56.7%), collectively accounting for over half of the offerings. Additionally, Java remains a common choice when a single language is used across both courses. Regional preferences exhibit significant diversity: Asian institutions favor lower-level languages like C and C++, whereas European universities explore functional programming languages like Haskell. Common transitions between courses include moves from Python to Java and from C to Java, indicating a preference for more robust languages at advanced levels. These findings offer valuable insights into global programming education trends adopted by leading universities and provide references for curriculum design and pedagogical strategies in introductory programming courses. Limitations include incomplete data from some institutions and variability in information accessibility, suggesting opportunities for future research.
- Intelligent Climate Control in University Residences for Temporary GuestsPublication . Fábio Fraga Paulo; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Matos, PauloResidential buildings are excellent cases for utilizing intelligent climate control solutions. They typically consist of spaces used by individuals or small groups of people, where each individual/group is independent in terms of routines and comfort preferences. Often, these individual spaces are used solely for overnight stays, meaning they remain unoccupied for most of the time. Climatization systems that operate independently of actual space usage or user comfort preferences are highly inefficient for this kind of scenario. Additionally, residents usually pay based on the duration they stay in the residence (per day or month), without any direct allocation of costs related to climatization. This contributes to the residents’ lack of responsibility in their use of the climatization, as they have no financial or environmental impact concerns. In this paper, the authors report a case study conducted in a university residence for short-term stays intended for visiting professors and researchers. The experience was done aiming at the reduction of energy consumption with climatization. The solution ensures that individual space control is allowed according to each resident’s preferences. This case study also posed challenges in assigning and maintaining access permissions to control the climatization system.
- 3D-Chatbot: A Intelligent Conversational Agent Integrating RAG, NLP, And VR For Commercial StoresPublication . Telmo Sampaio; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Matos, PauloThis paper presents a comprehensive 3D chatbot system that combines advanced AI capabilities with practical commercial applications in immersive virtual reality environments. The system integrates natural language processing, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures, and real-time speech processing to create seamless customer inquiry experiences. The implementation combines four main components: an intelligent data acquisition pipeline that transforms over 1,000 unstructured web documents into AI-ready knowledge bases; an advanced RAG system utilizing OpenAI's text-embedding-3-small model and Pinecone vector database for semantic search; multimodal speech processing with real-time speech-to-text conversion and lip-sync animation; and a Unity-based VR environment with professional avatar interactions. The results demonstrate exceptional performance with a 94.6% success rate across 65 test interactions, achieving response times under 100 milliseconds for knowledge retrieval and completing full voice response cycles in less than 3 seconds. The system maintains conversation context through a six-step interaction flow while accessing external knowledge sources, with 96.9% contextually appropriate responses and 92.3% conversation continuity in multi-turn dialogues. Performance optimizations ensure responsive operation under variable load conditions, demonstrating the viability of intelligent virtual assistants in three-dimensional commercial spaces.
- RFID-Based Smart Climate Control in Student Residences: A Personalized and Energy-Efficient ApproachPublication . Fábio Paulo; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Matos, PauloThe integration of smart technologies into residential spaces has opened new possibilities for enhancing user comfort and energy efficiency. This paper presents the development of a smart climate control system for student residences, leveraging RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology and a mobile application to personalize environmental settings based on individual user preferences and presence. In this system, each room is equipped with an RFID tag that uniquely identifies its location. Students use a dedicated smartphone application to scan the tag upon entering the room, which not only validates their presence but also triggers a personalized temperature setting. The application allows students to adjust their preferred temperature settings, enabling the system to learn individual routines and comfort preferences over time. At the core of the solution is an autonomous learning module that uses the collected data to predict occupancy patterns and automatically manage the room's climate. When a student is detected, the system adjusts the temperature to their preferred setting; when the room is unoccupied, it reduces energy consumption by entering an eco-mode. This dynamic approach aims to balance user comfort with energy efficiency. The architecture of the system includes RFID-based room identification, a low cost raspberry that acts as local server, a mobile interface for user interaction, and a centralized control system that handles data analysis and actuator management. The paper details the design, implementation, and testing of the platform, as well as the benefits of combining location-awareness, user input, and intelligent automation. This project demonstrates a scalable and user-centric model for smart climate control in shared residential settings, contributing to sustainable energy management and improved quality of life in student housing environments.
- Democratizing Financial Education: An API-Driven Platform Powered by Retrieval-Augmented GenerationPublication . Davi Silva Eleuterio; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Matos, PauloAddressing the critical gap in financial literacy requires scalable educational solutions that resonate with digital-native learners. This paper details an end-to-end system for delivering reliable financial education through an integrable conversational interface. Our architecture first uses a web scraper to automatically build a high-quality knowledge base from a trusted national portal. This curated data then grounds a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) conversational agent, a crucial step to ensure factual accuracy and mitigate Artificial Intelligence (AI) 'hallucinations.' The entire service is exposed via a high-performance Application Programming Interface (API), transforming the tool from a standalone application into a versatile service. This API-first design enables seamless integration into diverse educational ecosystems, such as university websites, learning management systems, and mobile apps, creating a trustworthy and scalable AI-powered educational platform.
- A Chatbot to Enhance the Portuguese National Tourism WebsitePublication . Telmo Sampaio; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Matos, PauloThe digital transformation of tourism in Portugal has led to the integration of AI-driven solutions to improve visitor engagement. This paper presents the development and implementation of a chatbot for the Portuguese national tourism website, VisitPortugal. The chatbot utilizes natural language processing to provide real-time, personalized assistance across multiple languages, including European languages (Portuguese, English, French, Spanish) and East Asian languages (Traditional Chinese), demonstrating robust cross-linguistic semantic understanding. The architecture incorporates a web crawler to collect and process tourism-related data, a vector database for efficient content retrieval, and GPT-4o Mini for generating contextually relevant responses. By filling gaps in tourism services, the chatbot improves the user experience, increases accessibility, and reinforces Portugal's position as a technologically advanced tourist destination. The results demonstrate high accuracy in the responses, reinforcing the effectiveness of the chatbot in facilitating seamless travel planning.
- Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality in the Factory of the Future: A Bibliometric AnalysisPublication . Monteiro, Redney; Ana Mara Moreira; Moreira, André; Jorge Laranjeira; Barbosa, José; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Cunha, Carlos R.; Paulo Leitão; Leitão, PauloMixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR) - technologies which are part of the spectrum of Extended Reality (XR) - are considered emerging technologies and have gained increasing attention across multiple sectors, including Tourism and Healthcare, due to their versatility as tools for training, simulation, and education, as well as their potential to serve as innovative Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI). Simultaneously, other emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Robotics have become central themes in R&D associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, commonly referred to as Industry 4.0, which emphasizes the digital transformation of industrial processes, through the integration of the new technologies. Beyond their relevance to Industry 4.0, XR technologies are also potential technologies in the emerging paradigm of Industry 5.0, which shifts the focus toward human-centric solutions and collaboration between humans and machines, this potential being based on the ability to enhance human interaction with complex systems. This paper presents the results of a bibliometric analysis of 634 peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in Web of Science and Scopus, spanning research from the past decade (2015 - 2025), as contribute to support future research and guide relevant stakeholders by identifying prevailing trends, leading contributors, and key publication sources in the domain of XR applied to industrial contexts.
- A Chatbot to Help Promoting Financial LiteracyPublication . Eleuterio, Davi Silva; Oliveira, Pedro Filipe; Matos, Paulo; Alves, Jorge Manuel Afonso; Alves, JorgeCurrently, governments and many other institutions have been making significant efforts to promote financial literacy. However, a considerable portion of the population still lacks basic financial knowledge, highlighting the need for updated strategies to enhance financial education. In today's digital world - where people often search for quick and convenient solutions - the development of a reliable and intelligent chatbot to answer questions related to financial concepts and decision-making can be very beneficial. This paper proposes the implementation of an automated web scraper to extract content from a trustworthy financial education website with plenty of useful concepts about finances, using this collected data to develop a chatbot which provides accurate and helpful responses to users. The solution is built using technologies such as Streamlit, Langchain, and OpenAI.
- Leveraging WebGL for Interactive and Real-Time Data Visualization through Digital Shadows in Automotive IndustryPublication . Moreira, André; Barbosa, José; Tavares, Rogério Júnior Correia; Cunha, Carlos R.; Leitão, PauloThe rise of Industry 4.0 and the increase of data captured, as well as its diversification, has intensified the need for advanced data visualization methods that support this volume of information, real-time monitoring and decision-making in industrial manufacturing environments. Traditional dashboards, while widely adopted, often rely on static 2D representations that lack spatial context, limiting their effectiveness in scenarios where complex and three-dimensional physical objects, such as vehicles, are involved. To address this gap, this work presents a WebGLbased module integrated into a dashboard system to enhance the visualization of data captured in vehicle production lines. The proposed module leverages interactive 3D models, designed as digital shadows of the physical counterpart, to provide a more intuitive and immersive understanding of the production state. This system establishes seamless bidirectional communication between the dashboard and the WebGL module, enabling realtime updates and user interactions, while the data captured in the industrial manufacturing workstations by methods such as geometric measuring systems and sensors is mapped to the 3D model, allowing overseers to identify measurement points and potential defects with improved clarity. Based on the combination of interactive visualization with rule-based monitoring, the system supports the pursuit of zero-defect manufacturing. This work contributes with a replicable use case of integrating WebGL into dashboards for industrial applications, highlighting both technical implementation and practical benefits.
- Fog Computing: The Secret Sauce for Immersive Tech ExperiencesPublication . Sousa, João Paulo; Jesús M. Torres-Jorge; Tavares, Rogério Júnior CorreiaIn recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of computer-intensive applications such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, online games, and other applications related to the creative industry (Amira Rayane et al. 2020; Zhang et al., 2017). These technologies often require fast and efficient computational resources to provide immersive and real-time experiences to users. So, in this paper, we will present the pros and cons of Fog Computing for Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Realities, as well for 360 videos. We will outline a brief background on fog computing in comparison with traditional cloud computing and show the main features of fog computing, its services, and deployment model. Then, we'll summarize the background for Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and 360 video, and discuss how they integrate with fog computing. By analyzing the advantages and disadvantages, we can better understand how fog computing can benefit these advanced applications and improve user experiences. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024.