Research Centre in Digitalization and Intelligent Robotics

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Organizational Unit

Publications

Degradation of paracetamol by wet peroxide oxidation using carbon nanotubes synthesized from plastic solid waste

Publication . Sanches, Lucas Fenato; Silva, Adriano S.; Roman, Fernanda; Díaz de Tuesta, Jose Luis; Silva, Fernando Alves; Pereira, Ana I.; Silva, Adrián; Gomes, Helder

Within increased production and economic/social dependence of plastic utilization, an environmental problem has also emerged. In this scenario, plastic solid waste (PSW) recycling/management/recovery has become a problem of public concern, with a global generation estimated at 150 million tonnes per year. Materials produced from PSW can be classified as primary (performance/characteristics equivalent to virgin plastic), secondary (performance’s requirement lower than the original application), tertiary (PSW used as feedstock for the generation of chemicals and fuels), and quaternary (energy recovery via incineration) recycled materials [1]. For instance, pyrolysis of PSW has been extensively used for the thermochemical conversion of useless PSW into oil, gas, and carbon materials, thus classified as terciary recycled material.

2022Conference object

Open access

Automatic annotation of heart rate sequences

Publication . Lopes, Júlio Castro; Vieira, João; Antunes, Alexandre Fernandes; Deusdado, Leonel; Lopes, Rui Pedro

Heart Rate (HR) measurement is one of the most effective ways to determine whether a person is stressed or not. The analysis of a series of HR measurements can help determine whether the HR decreased, increased dramatically, or remained consistent during that time period. With this in mind, an automatic annotator that can automatically label HR sequences, determining these three possible states, is an ideal solution because it eliminates the need for a human to do it manually. This paper presents a web-based application that, given a .csv file containing Heart Rate successive measurements and their respective time stamps, can label sequences of any size that the user specifies. This opens up the possibility of training Machine Learning models with this data and classifying whether the user is in a stressful situation or not, in real time. Although further refinements will be made, our annotator proved to be robust and consistent in its annotation performance.

2023Conference object

Open access

IoT-based solution to reduce waste and promote a sustainable farming industry

Publication . Stefanuto, Bruno; Funchal, Gustavo Silva; Melo, Victoria; Mendes, Andre C.; Raimundo, Délio; Gouveia, Hélia; Coelho, João Paulo; Leitão, Paulo

Waste and the necessity to increase sustainability in the farming industry are some of the challenges addressed in the agri-food chain. With the potential of digital technologies, e.g., the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence, to revolutionize agriculture by enabling more efficient and intelligent monitoring, system architecture and IoT nodes were developed to support relevant parameters for composing a Sustainability Index for the Bio-economy (siBIO). These nodes are scalable, modular, capable of meeting on-demand production needs, and provide a cost-effective alternative to commercial solutions or manual data collection methods. The collected data is transmitted to middleware and then stored, analyzed, and displayed on a user-friendly dashboard, providing data to siBIO and consequently contributing to a more sustainable farming industry and reducing waste of resources and food. The results include the implementation of IoT nodes in a case study involving a vineyard and an apple orchard. The nodes are successfully collecting data on environmental, operational, and energy parameters such as temperature, air humidity, soil moisture, precipitation, and water and electricity consumption for irrigation. The tests of data transmission and collection, functionality and robustness of the proposed solution were promising, offering a way to quantify the sustainability index and facilitate the exchange of agricultural information in a reliable and standardized way.

2023Conference object

Open access

Time-Dependency of Guided Local Search to Solve the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows

Publication . Silva, Adriano S.; Lima, José; Silva, Adrián; Gomes, Helder; Pereira, Ana I.

Research have been driven by the increased demand for delivery and pick-up services to develop new formulations and algorithms for solving Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP). The main objective is to create algorithms that can identify paths considering execution time in real-world scenarios. This study focused on using the Guided Local Search (GLS) metaheuristic available in OR-Tools to solve the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows using the Solomons instances. The execution time was used as a stop criterion, with short runs ranging from 1 to 10 s and a long run of 360 s for comparison. The results showed that the GLS metaheuristic from OR-Tools is applicable for achieving high performance in finding the shortest path and optimizing routes within constrained execution times. It outperformed the best-known solutions from the literature in longer execution times and even provided a close-to-optimal solution within 10 s. These findings suggest the potential application of this tool for dynamic VRP scenarios that require faster algorithms.

2024Conference object

Open access

Interactive Musical Setting with Deep Learning and Object Recognition

Publication . Cardoso, Mário; Lopes, Rui Pedro

The SeMI - Interactive Musical Setting, explores the possibilities of joining machine learning, the physical and the sound world. In this context, a machine learning algorithm and model was used to identify physical objects through image processing. Each physical object is associated with a student’s produced musical texture that starts playing when the object is recognized by the device. This allows defining use cases in which students have to develop diverse although interrelated sound textures and combine them with a physical world, in both a fake orchestra, that reacts to people and objects in front of it, and mood rooms, for example. The application was developed for iPad and iPhone, using Swift programming language and the iOS operating system and used in the classes of the masters on Teaching of Musical Education in the Basic School.

2020Conference object

Open access