2021
Authors
Terra F.; Rodrigues L.; Magalhaes S.; Santos F.; Moura P.; Cunha M.;
Publication
2021 International Symposium of Asian Control Association on Intelligent Robotics and Industrial Automation, IRIA 2021
Abstract
The world society needs to produce more food with the highest quality standards to feed the world population with the same level of nutrition. Microfarms and local food production enable growing vegetables near the population and reducing the operational logistics costs related to post-harvest food handling. However, it isn't economical viable neither efficient to have one person devoted to these microfarms task. To overcome this issue, we propose an open-source robotic solution capable of performing multitasks in small polyculture farms. This robot is equipped with optical sensors, manipulators and other mechatronic technology to monitor and process both biotic and abiotic agronomic data. This information supports the consequent activation of manipulators that perform several agricultural tasks: crop and weed detection, sowing and watering. The development of the robot meets low-cost requirements so that it can be a putative commercial solution. This solution is designed to be relevant as a test platform to support the assembly of new sensors and further develop new cognitive solutions, to raise awareness on topics related to Precision Agriculture. We are looking for a rational use of resources and several other aspects of an evolved, economically efficient and ecologically sustainable agriculture.
2021
Authors
Cennamo N.; Jorge P.A.S.;
Publication
IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Magazine
Abstract
2021
Authors
Almeida, F; Simoes, J;
Publication
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Abstract
Several companies in the information technology field are progressively adopting Agile methodologies. This change necessarily transforms the management paradigm and poses new challenges to the leadership process. In this sense, this study seeks to explore the challenges perceived by leaders and perceive the competencies they should have to manage projects and teams in an Agile environment. The study used a survey to obtain data from 387 professionals in the information technology sector. The findings reveal the most important skills include the ability to have people skills, team management competencies, provide feedback on employee performance, and have problem-solving skills. Additionally, this study reveals people's management dimension is key to increasing productivity in Agile environments, and furthermore, respondents' years of experience proved to be discriminating in perceiving the importance of these skills. The outcomes of this study are relevant for companies that are migrating to the agile paradigm and are facing challenges in managing the leadership of these projects.
2021
Authors
Albuquerque, T; Cardoso, JS;
Publication
2021 IEEE 18TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BIOMEDICAL IMAGING (ISBI)
Abstract
Cervical cancer ranks as the fourth most common cancer among females worldwide with roughly 528,000 new cases yearly. Significant progress in the realm of artificial intel-ligence particularly in neural networks and deep learning help physicians to diagnose cervical cancer more accurately. In this paper, we address a classification problem with the widely used VGG16 architecture. In addition to classification error, our model considers a regularization part during tuning of the weights, acting as prior knowledge of the colposcopic image. This embedded regularization approach. using a 2D Gaussian kernel, has enabled the model to learn which sections of the medical images are more crucial for the classification task. The experimental results show an improvement compared with standard transfer learning and multimodal approaches of cervical cancer classification in literature.
2021
Authors
Pedreira, V; Barros, D; Pinto, P;
Publication
SENSORS
Abstract
The concepts brought by Industry 4.0 have been explored and gradually applied.The cybersecurity impacts on the progress of Industry 4.0 implementations and their interactions with other technologies require constant surveillance, and it is important to forecast cybersecurity-related challenges and trends to prevent and mitigate these impacts. The contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) it presents the results of a systematic review of industry 4.0 regarding attacks, vulnerabilities and defense strategies, (2) it details and classifies the attacks, vulnerabilities and defenses mechanisms, and (3) it presents a discussion of recent challenges and trends regarding cybersecurity-related areas for Industry 4.0. From the systematic review, regarding the attacks, the results show that most attacks are carried out on the network layer, where dos-related and mitm attacks are the most prevalent ones. Regarding vulnerabilities, security flaws in services and source code, and incorrect validations in authentication procedures are highlighted. These are vulnerabilities that can be exploited by dos attacks and buffer overflows in industrial devices and networks. Regarding defense strategies, Blockchain is presented as one of the most relevant technologies under study in terms of defense mechanisms, thanks to its ability to be used in a variety of solutions, from Intrusion Detection Systems to the prevention of Distributed dos attacks, and most defense strategies are presented as an after-attack solution or prevention, in the sense that the defense mechanisms are only placed or thought, only after the harm has been done, and not as a mitigation strategy to prevent the cyberattack. Concerning challenges and trends, the review shows that digital sovereignty, cyber sovereignty, and data sovereignty are recent topics being explored by researchers within the Industry 4.0 scope, and GAIA-X and International Data Spaces are recent initiatives regarding data sovereignty. A discussion of trends is provided, and future challenges are pointed out.
2021
Authors
Sarmento, J; Aguiar, AS; Santos, FND; Sousa, AJ;
Publication
2021 International Symposium of Asian Control Association on Intelligent Robotics and Industrial Automation, IRIA 2021
Abstract
Autonomous navigation in agriculture is very challenging as it usually takes place outdoors where there is rough terrain, uncontrolled natural lighting, constantly changing organic scenarios and sometimes the absence of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal. In this work, a monocular visual system is proposed to estimate angular orientation and navigate between woody crops, more specifically a vineyard, using a Proportional Integrative Derivative (PID)-based controller. The guidance is provided by combining two ways to find the center of the vineyard: First, by estimating the vanishing point and second, by averaging the position of the two closest base trunk detections. Then, by the monocular angle perception, the angular error is determined. For obtaining the trunk position in the image, object detection using Deep Learning (DL) based Neural Networks (NN) is used. To evaluate the proposed controller, a visual vineyard simulation is created using Gazebo. The proposed joint controller is able to travel along a simulated straight vineyard with an RMS error of 1.17 cm. Moreover, a simulated curved vineyard modeled after the Douro region is tested in this work, where the robot was able to steer with an RMS error of 7.28 cm. © 2021 IEEE.
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