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Publications

2019

Altitude control of an underwater vehicle based on computer vision

Authors
Rodrigues, PM; Cruz, NA; Pinto, AM;

Publication
OCEANS 2018 MTS/IEEE Charleston, OCEAN 2018

Abstract
It is common the use of the sonar technology in order acquire and posteriorly control the distance of an underwater vehicle towards an obstacle. Although this solution simplifies the problem and is effective in most cases, it might carry some disadvantages in certain underwater vehicles or conditions. In this work it is presented a system capable of controlling the altitude of an underwater vehicle using computer vision. The sensor capable of computing the distance is composed of a CCD camera and 2 green pointer lasers. Regarding the control of the vehicle, the solution used was based on the switching of two controllers, a velocity controller (based on a PI controller), and a position controller (based on a PD controller). The vehicle chosen to test the developed system was a profiler, which main task is the vertical navigation. The mathematical model was obtained and used in order to validate the controllers designed using the Simulink toolbox from Matlab. It was used a Kalman filter in order to have a better estimation of the state variables (altitude, depth, and velocity). The tests relative to the sensor developed responsible for the acquisition of the altitude showed an average relative error equal to 1 % in the range from 0 to 2.5 m. The UWsim underwater simulation environment was used in order to validate the integration of the system and its performance. © 2018 IEEE.

2019

FLIGBY -A Serious Game Tool to Enhance Motivation and Competencies in Entrepreneurship

Authors
Buzady, Z; Almeida, F;

Publication
INFORMATICS-BASEL

Abstract
Entrepreneurship is currently one of the most fundamental economic activities in the 21st century. Entrepreneurship encourages young generations to generate their self-employment and develop key soft-skills that will be useful throughout their professional career. This study aims to present and explore a case study of a higher education institution that adopts FLIGBY as a serious game, which allows students to develop entrepreneurship skills in an immersive way and based on real challenges that can be found in business environments. The findings indicate that FLIGBY offers relevant potentials and new possibilities in the development of management, leadership, and entrepreneurship skills. Furthermore, the game allows the inclusion of summative and formative assessment elements, which are essential in the process of monitoring and analyzing the student's performance.

2019

The benefits and challenges of general data protection regulation for the information technology sector

Authors
Poritskiy, N; Oliveira, F; Almeida, F;

Publication
DIGITAL POLICY REGULATION AND GOVERNANCE

Abstract
Purpose The implementation of European data protection is a challenge for businesses and has imposed legal, technical and organizational changes for companies. This study aims to explore the benefits and challenges that companies operating in the information technology (IT) sector have experienced in applying the European data protection. Additionally, this study aims to explore whether the benefits and challenges faced by these companies were different considering their dimension and the state of implementation of the regulation. Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a quantitative methodology, based on a survey conducted with Portuguese IT companies. The survey is composed of 30 questions divided into three sections, namely, control data; assessment; and benefits and challenges. The survey was created on Google Drive and distributed among Portuguese IT companies between March and April of 2019. The data were analyzed using the Stata software using descriptive and inferential analysis techniques using the ANOVA one-way test. Findings A total of 286 responses were received. The main benefits identified by the application of European data protection include increased confidence and legal clarification. On the other hand, the main challenges include the execution of audits to systems and processes and the application of the right to erasure. The findings allow us to conclude that the state of implementation of the general data protection regulation (GDPR), and the type of company are discriminating factors in the perception of benefits and challenges. Originality/value The implementation of the GDPR is still in an initial phase. This study is pioneering in synthesizing the main benefits and challenges of its adoption considering the companies operating in the IT sector. Furthermore, this study explores the impact of the size of the company and the status of implementation of the GDPR on the perception of the established benefits and challenges.

2019

A Routing Metric for Inter-flow Interference-aware Flying Multi-hop Networks

Authors
Coelho, A; Almeida, EN; Ruela, J; Campos, R; Ricardo, M;

Publication
2019 IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTERS AND COMMUNICATIONS (ISCC)

Abstract
The growing demand for broadband communications anytime, anywhere has paved the way to the usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for providing Internet access in areas without network infrastructure and enhancing the performance of existing networks. However, the usage of Flying Multi-hop Networks (FMNs) in such scenarios brings up significant challenges concerning network routing, in order to permanently provide the Quality of Service expected by the users. The problem is exacerbated in crowded events, where the FMN may be formed by many UAVs to address the traffic demand, causing interflow interference within the FMN. Typically, estimating inter-flow interference is not straightforward and requires the exchange of probe packets, thus increasing network overhead. The main contribution of this paper is an inter-flow interference-aware routing metric, named I2R, designed for centralized routing in FMNs with controllable topology. I2R does not require any control packets and enables the configuration of paths with minimal Euclidean distance formed by UAVs with the lowest number of neighbors in carrier-sense range, thus minimizing inter-flow interference in the FMN. Simulation results show the I2R superior performance, with significant gains in terms of throughput and end-to-end delay, when compared with state of the art routing metrics.

2019

Novelty Detection for Multi-Label Stream Classification

Authors
Costa Júnior, JD; de Faria, ER; Andrade Silva, Jd; Gama, J; Cerri, R;

Publication
8th Brazilian Conference on Intelligent Systems, BRACIS 2019, Salvador, Brazil, October 15-18, 2019

Abstract

2019

Capacity Planning of Energy Hub in Multi-carrier Energy Networks: A Data-driven Robust Stochastic Programming Approach

Authors
Cao, Y; Wei, W; Wang, J; Mei, S; Shafie Khah, M; Catalao, JPS;

Publication
IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting

Abstract
Cascaded utilization of natural gas, electric power, and heat could leverage synergetic effects among these energy resources, precipitating the advent of integrated energy systems. In such infrastructures, energy hub is an interface among different energy systems, playing the role of energy production, conversion and storage. The capacity of energy hub largely determines how tightly these energy systems are coupled and how flexibly the whole system would behave. This paper proposes a data-driven two-stage robust stochastic programming model for energy hub capacity planning with distributional robustness guarantee. Renewable generation and load uncertainties are modelled by a family of ambiguous probability distributions near an empirical distribution in the sense of Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence measure. The objective is to minimize the sum of the construction cost and the expected life-cycle operating cost under the worst-case distribution restricted in the ambiguity set. Network energy flow in normal operating conditions is considered; demand supply reliability in extreme conditions is taken into account via robust chance constraints. Through duality theory and sampling average approximation, the proposed model is transformed into an equivalent convex program with a nonlinear objective and linear constraints, and is solved by an outer-approximation algorithm which entails solving only linear program. Case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and method. © 2019 IEEE.

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