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About

About

Ricardo Sousa has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto since 2011 and is currently a assistant researcher and assistant to the coordination at the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD) at INESC TEC. He participated in European projects (e.g., MAESTRA), national (e.g., ADIRA4.0) and scientific projects with companies (e.g., NDTech-Amorim) related to Signal Processing, Data Mining and Machine Learning. Currently, he coordinates teams in a PRODUTECH mobilizing program (related to Production and Quality Management) and in a P2020/FCT/MIT Portugal project (Technology for power transformers). Has specific interest in the areas of Maintenance and Predictive Quality, Process Mining and Forecasting with application in the field of Industry/Production. He lectured at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, in programming and information systems subjects. Co-supervised/supervised more than 17 master's dissertations in the areas of Signal Processing and Data mining/Machine Learning.

Interest
Topics
Details

Details

  • Name

    Ricardo Teixeira Sousa
  • Role

    Assistant Researcher
  • Since

    16th September 2005
013
Publications

2025

Online boxplot derived outlier detection

Authors
Mazarei, A; Sousa, R; Mendes Moreira, J; Molchanov, S; Ferreira, HM;

Publication
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DATA SCIENCE AND ANALYTICS

Abstract
Outlier detection is a widely used technique for identifying anomalous or exceptional events across various contexts. It has proven to be valuable in applications like fault detection, fraud detection, and real-time monitoring systems. Detecting outliers in real time is crucial in several industries, such as financial fraud detection and quality control in manufacturing processes. In the context of big data, the amount of data generated is enormous, and traditional batch mode methods are not practical since the entire dataset is not available. The limited computational resources further compound this issue. Boxplot is a widely used batch mode algorithm for outlier detection that involves several derivations. However, the lack of an incremental closed form for statistical calculations during boxplot construction poses considerable challenges for its application within the realm of big data. We propose an incremental/online version of the boxplot algorithm to address these challenges. Our proposed algorithm is based on an approximation approach that involves numerical integration of the histogram and calculation of the cumulative distribution function. This approach is independent of the dataset's distribution, making it effective for all types of distributions, whether skewed or not. To assess the efficacy of the proposed algorithm, we conducted tests using simulated datasets featuring varying degrees of skewness. Additionally, we applied the algorithm to a real-world dataset concerning software fault detection, which posed a considerable challenge. The experimental results underscored the robust performance of our proposed algorithm, highlighting its efficacy comparable to batch mode methods that access the entire dataset. Our online boxplot method, leveraging dataset distribution to define whiskers, consistently achieved exceptional outlier detection results. Notably, our algorithm demonstrated computational efficiency, maintaining constant memory usage with minimal hyperparameter tuning.

2025

KDBI special issue: Time-series pattern verification in CNC turning-A comparative study of one-class and binary classification

Authors
da Silva, JP; Nogueira, AR; Pinto, J; Curral, M; Alves, AC; Sousa, R;

Publication
EXPERT SYSTEMS

Abstract
Integrating Industry 4.0 and Quality 4.0 optimises manufacturing through IoT and ML, improving processes and product quality. The primary challenge involves identifying patterns in computer numerical control (CNC) machining time-series data to boost manufacturing quality control. The proposed solution involves an experimental study comparing one-class and binary classification algorithms. This study aims to classify time-series data from CNC turning machines, offering insight into monitoring and adjusting tool wear to maintain product quality. The methodology entails extracting spectral features from time-series data to train both one-class and binary classification algorithms, assessing their effectiveness and computational efficiency. Although certain models consistently outperform others, determining the best performing is not possible, as a trade-off between classification and computational performance is observed, with gradient boosting standing out for effectively balancing both aspects. Thus, the choice between one-class and binary classification ultimately relies on dataset's features and task objectives.

2024

Estimating the Likelihood of Financial Behaviours Using Nearest Neighbors A case study on market sensitivities

Authors
Mendes Neves, T; Seca, D; Sousa, R; Ribeiro, C; Mendes Moreira, J;

Publication
COMPUTATIONAL ECONOMICS

Abstract
As many automated algorithms find their way into the IT systems of the banking sector, having a way to validate and interpret the results from these algorithms can lead to a substantial reduction in the risks associated with automation. Usually, validating these pricing mechanisms requires human resources to manually analyze and validate large quantities of data. There is a lack of effective methods that analyze the time series and understand if what is currently happening is plausible based on previous data, without information about the variables used to calculate the price of the asset. This paper describes an implementation of a process that allows us to validate many data points automatically. We explore the K-Nearest Neighbors algorithm to find coincident patterns in financial time series, allowing us to detect anomalies, outliers, and data points that do not follow normal behavior. This system allows quicker detection of defective calculations that would otherwise result in the incorrect pricing of financial assets. Furthermore, our method does not require knowledge about the variables used to calculate the time series being analyzed. Our proposal uses pattern matching and can validate more than 58% of instances, substantially improving human risk analysts' efficiency. The proposal is completely transparent, allowing analysts to understand how the algorithm made its decision, increasing the trustworthiness of the method.

2024

Optimal gas subset selection for dissolved gas analysis in power transformers

Authors
Pinto, J; Esteves, V; Tavares, S; Sousa, R;

Publication
PROGRESS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract
The power transformer is one of the key components of any electrical grid, and, as such, modern day industrialization activities require constant usage of the asset. This increases the possibility of failures and can potentially diminish the lifespan of a power transformer. Dissolved gas analysis (DGA) is a technique developed to quantify the existence of hydrocarbon gases in the content of the power transformer oil, which in turn can indicate the presence of faults. Since this process requires different chemical analysis for each type of gas, the overall cost of the operation increases with number of gases. Thus said, a machine learning methodology was defined to meet two simultaneous objectives, identify gas subsets, and predict the remaining gases, thus restoring them. Two subsets of equal or smaller size to those used by traditional methods (Duval's triangle, Roger's ratio, IEC table) were identified, while showing potentially superior performance. The models restored the discarded gases, and the restored set was compared with the original set in a variety of validation tasks.

2024

Process mining embeddings: Learning vector representations for Petri nets

Authors
Colonna, JG; Fares, AA; Duarte, M; Sousa, R;

Publication
INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS

Abstract
Process Mining offers a powerful framework for uncovering, analyzing, and optimizing real-world business processes. Petri nets provide a versatile means of modeling process behavior. However, traditional methods often struggle to effectively compare complex Petri nets, hindering their potential for process enhancement. To address this challenge, we introduce PetriNet2Vec, an unsupervised methodology inspired by Doc2Vec. This approach converts Petri nets into embedding vectors, facilitating the comparison, clustering, and classification of process models. We validated our approach using the PDC Dataset, comprising 96 diverse Petri net models. The results demonstrate that PetriNet2Vec effectively captures the structural properties of process models, enabling accurate process classification and efficient process retrieval. Specifically, our findings highlight the utility of the learned embeddings in two key downstream tasks: process classification and process retrieval. In process classification, the embeddings allowed for accurate categorization of process models based on their structural properties. In process retrieval, the embeddings enabled efficient retrieval of similar process models using cosine distance. These results demonstrate the potential of PetriNet2Vec to significantly enhance process mining capabilities.

Supervised
thesis

2024

Online multi stream prediction for CNC machining

Author
Mohammad Pasandidehpoor

Institution
UP-FEUP

2023

Anomaly Detection on Multivariate Time Series from CNC Machining using Machine Learning techniques

Author
Gabriel Copolecchia Carvalhal

Institution
UP-FEUP

2023

Anomaly Detection on Multivariate Time-Series from Lithography Equipment using Machine Learning

Author
João Gabriel Luís Patrício

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

Combination of multi-paradigm models for Power Transformer fault prediction

Author
Francisco José Guedes de Melo Aguiar

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

Online Process Extractor and Updater

Author
Sónia Rafaela Costa da Rocha

Institution
UP-FEUP