Abstract
<p>The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been affecting all sectors worldwide, and efforts have been targeting the enhancement of people’s health and labour conditions of collaborators belonging to healthcare institutions. The recent vaccines emerging against covid-19 are seen as a solution to address the problem that has already killed up to two million people. The preparation of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine requires a specific manipulation before its administration. A correct homogenization with saline solution is needed and, therefore, a manual process with a predefined protocol should be accomplished. This action can endanger the operators’ ergonomics due to the repetitive movement of the process. This paper proposes a low-cost prototype incorporating an arduino based embedded system actuating a servomotor to perform an autonomous vials’ homogenization allowing to redirect these healthcare workers to other tasks. Moreover, a contactless start order process was implemented to avoid contact with the operator and, consequently, the contamination. The prototype was successfully tested and recognised, and is being applied during the preparation of the covid-19 vaccines at the hospital pharmacy of <em>Centro Hospitalar de Vila Nova de Gaia/Espinho</em>, <em>E.P.E.</em>, Portugal. It can be easily replicated since the source files to assemble it are provided by the authors.</p>

Abstract
The current trend in energy sustainability and the energy growing demand have given emergence to distributed hybrid energy systems based on renewable energy sources. This study proposes a strategy for the optimal sizing of an autonomous hybrid energy system integrating a photovoltaic park, a wind energy conversion, a diesel group, and a storage system. The problem is formulated as a uni-objective function subjected to economical and technical constraints, combined with evolutionary approaches mainly particle swarm optimization algorithm and genetic algorithm to determine the number of installation elements for a reduced system cost. The computational results have revealed an optimal configuration for the hybrid energy system.

Abstract
Engineering education, the process of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional practice of engineering, can be done by resorting to several methodologies. Project Based Learning is a teaching method that allows students to get knowledge and skills by developing and solving complex problems or challenges, supported by a supervisor. In the presented work, a real airplane cockpit development is used as a case study for Mechanical, Mechatronics, Electrical, and Computer Science courses. Students are encouraged to develop modules to be applied in the cockpit and further integrated with other ones.

Abstract
In the technology communication era, the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) has become popular among other digital solutions, since it offers the integration of information from several organisms and at several sources. By means of this, we can access data from distant locations and at any time. In the specific case of water monitoring, the conventional outdated measurement methods can lead to low efficiency and complexity issues. Hence, Smart systems rise as a solution for a broad of cases. Smart River is a smart system platform developed to optimize the resources and monitoring the quality of water parameters of the Fervença river. The central solution is based at Centro Ciência Viva de Bragança (CCVB), one of the 21 science centers in Portugal that aims to promote the preservation and environmental awareness for the population. By using the IoT technologies, the system allows real-time data collection with low cost and low energy consumption, being a complement of existing projects that are being developed to promote the ecological importance of natural resources. This paper covers sensor module selection for data collection inside the river and data storage. The parameters of the river are visualized using a program developed in Unity engine to present data averages and comparison between weeks, months, and years.

Abstract
Remote laboratories are of extraordinary importance for students that cannot attend classroom lessons. Once Automation and industrial networks are topics of electrical engineering that should be studied and experimented with by students in a practical way, this paper presents a developed tool that students can use to access the laboratory equipment from outside. It has as an advantage the capacity of handling several students simultaneously, and it is accessible 24 h per day and 7 days per week. The proposed tool also allows students in the classroom to interact with the system. With this proposed tool, connections between Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) with supervision and control of high-level systems such as LabVIEW IDE are possible to program and test. The hardware implementation in the laboratory can be accessed by students to control illumination, heating and window shutter, and sensors to acquire wind speed, temperature, humidity, and CO2, as examples.

Abstract
Pastoral activities bring several benefits to the ecosystem and rural communities. These activities are already carried out daily with goats, cows and sheep in Portugal. Still, they could be better applied to take advantage of their benefits. Most of these pastoral ecosystem services are not remunerated, indicating a lack of making these activities more attractive to bring returns to shepherds, breeders and landowners. The monitoring of these activities provides data to value these services, besides being able to indicate directly to the shepherds’ routes to drive their flocks and the respective return. There are devices in the market that perform this monitoring, but they are not adaptable to the circumstances and challenges required in the Northeast of Portugal. This work addresses a system to perform animals tracking, and the development of a test platform, through long-range technologies for transmission using LoRaWAN architecture. The results demonstrated the use of LoRaWAN in tracking services, allowing to conclude about the viability of the proposed methodology and the direction for future works.