Abstract

Abstract
The goal of this project, one of the proposals of the EPS@ISEP 2014 Spring, was to develop an Aquaponics System. Over recent years Aquaponics systems have received increased attention due to its possibilities in helping reduce strain on resources within 1st and 3rd world countries. Aquaponics is the combination of Hydroponics and Aquaculture and mimics a natural environment in order to successfully apply and enhance the understanding of natural cycles within an indoor process. By using this knowledge of natural cycles it was possible to create a system with the capabilities similar to that of a natural environment with the benefits of electronic adaptions to enhance the overall efficiency of the system. The multinational team involved in its development was composed of five students, from five countries and fields of study. This paper covers their solution, involving overall design, the technology involved and the benefits it could bring to the current market. The team was able to achieve the final rendered Computer Aided Design (CAD) drawings, successfully performed all the electronic testing, and designed a solution under budget. Furthermore, the solution presented was deeply studied from the sustainability viewpoint and the team also developed a product specific marketing plan. Finally, the students involved in this project obtained new knowledge and skills.

Abstract
In modern industrial environments, ensuring the quality of manufactured components is critical, particularly when dealing with reflective surfaces that hinder conventional inspection techniques. Although deep learning-based methods offer robust solutions for visual defect detection, their performance often hinges on the availability of substantial annotated datasets. In industrial scenarios, labeling such datasets is costly and time-consuming. This study investigates applying sample selection techniques to reduce annotation efforts for porosity detection on machined aluminium parts. Several selection strategies were evaluated using a real-world dataset composed of high-resolution images, including uncertainty, diversity, random-based criteria, and hybrid combinations. The best-performing strategy, which combined entropy-based uncertainty, spatial diversity, and random-based, achieved an F1-score of 86.70% and a recall of 82.99% after ten iterations using only 2,400 annotated images, corresponding to 66.67% of the active learning pool. Although the fully supervised model achieved an F1-score of 88.84% and a recall of 86.30%, the proposed approach proved a competitive alternative. These results demonstrate that selective data annotation can significantly reduce labeling effort while maintaining reliable performance in defect detection, even under the challenging conditions posed by reflective industrial parts.

Abstract
The textile industry faces economic and environmental challenges due to low recycling rates and contamination from fasteners like buttons, rivets, and zippers. This paper proposes an Red, Green, Blue (RGB) vision system using You Only Look Once version 11 (YOLOv11) with a sliding window technique for automated fastener detection. The system addresses small object detection, occlusion, and fabric variability, incorporating Grounding DINO for garment localization and U2-Net for segmentation. Experiments show the sliding window method outperforms full-image detection for buttons and rivets (precision 0.874, recall 0.923), while zipper detection is less effective due to dataset limitations. This work advances scalable AI-driven solutions for textile recycling, supporting circular economy goals. Future work will target hidden fasteners, dataset expansion and fastener removal.

Abstract

Abstract
Hexapod robots, with their six-legged design, excel in stability and adaptability on challenging terrain but pose significant control challenges due to their high degrees of freedom. While reinforcement learning (RL) has been explored for robot navigation, few studies have systematically compared on-policy and off-policy methods for multi-legged locomotion. This work presents a comparative study of SARSA and Q-Learning for trajectory control of a simulated hexapod robot, focusing on the influence of learning rate (alpha), discount factor (gamma), and eligibility trace (lambda). The evaluation spans eight initial poses, with performance measured through lateral deviation (Ey), orientation error (E theta), and iteration count. Results show that Q-Learning generally achieves faster convergence and greater stability, particularly with higher gamma and lambda values, while SARSA can achieve competitive accuracy with careful parameter tuning. The findings demonstrate that eligibility traces substantially improve learning precision and provide practical guidelines for robust RL-based control in multi-legged robotic systems.