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Publications

2023

FC Portugal: RoboCup 2022 3D Simulation League and Technical Challenge Champions

Authors
Abreu, M; Kasaei, M; Reis, LP; Lau, N;

Publication
ROBOCUP 2022

Abstract
FC Portugal, a team from the universities of Porto and Aveiro, won the main competition of the 2022 RoboCup 3D Simulation League, with 17 wins, 1 tie and no losses. During the course of the competition, the team scored 84 goals while conceding only 2. FC Portugal also won the 2022 RoboCup 3D Simulation League Technical Challenge, accumulating the maximum amount of points by ending first in its both events: the Free/Scientific Challenge, and the Fat Proxy Challenge. The team presented in this year's competition was rebuilt from the ground up since the last RoboCup. No previous code was used or adapted, with the exception of the 6D pose estimation algorithm, and the get-up behaviors, which were re-optimized. This paper describes the team's new architecture and development approach. Key strategy elements include team coordination, role management, formation, communication, skill management and path planning. New lower-level skills were based on a deterministic analytic model and a shallow neural network that learned residual dynamics through reinforcement learning. This process, together with an overlapped learning approach, improved seamless transitions, learning time, and the behavior in terms of efficiency and stability. In comparison with the previous team, the omnidirectional walk is more stable and went from 0.70m/s to 0.90 m/s, the long kick from 15m to 19m, and the new close-control dribble reaches up to 1.41 m/s.

2023

Decoding Reinforcement Learning for Newcomers

Authors
Neves, FS; Andrade, GA; Reis, MF; Aguiar, AP; Pinto, AM;

Publication
IEEE ACCESS

Abstract
The Reinforcement Learning (RL) paradigm is showing promising results as a generic purpose framework for solving decision-making problems (e.g., robotics, games, finance). The aim of this work is to reduce the learning barriers and inspire young students, researchers and educators to use RL as an obvious tool to solve robotics problems. This paper provides an intelligible step-by-step RL problem formulation and the availability of an easy-to-use interactive simulator for students at various levels (e.g., undergraduate, bachelor, master, doctorate), researchers and educators. The interactive tool facilitates the familiarization with the key concepts of RL, its problem formulation and implementation. In this work, RL is used for solving a robotics 2D navigational problem where the robot needs to avoid collisions with obstacles while aiming to reach a goal point. A navigational problem is simple and convenient for educational purposes, since the outcome is unambiguous (e.g., the goal is reached or not, a collision happened or not). Due to a lack of open-source graphical interactive simulators concerning the field of RL, this paper combines theoretical exposition with an accessible practical tool to facilitate the apprehension. The results demonstrated are produced by a Python script that is released as open-source to reduce the learning barriers in such innovative research topic in robotics.

2023

PROGpedia: Collection of source-code submitted to introductory programming assignments

Authors
Paiva, JC; Leal, JP; Figueira, A;

Publication
DATA IN BRIEF

Abstract
Learning how to program is a difficult task. To acquire the re-quired skills, novice programmers must solve a broad range of programming activities, always supported with timely, rich, and accurate feedback. Automated assessment tools play a major role in fulfilling these needs, being a common pres-ence in introductory programming courses. As programming exercises are not easy to produce and those loaded into these tools must adhere to specific format requirements, teachers often opt for reusing them for several years. There-fore, most automated assessment tools, particularly Mooshak, store hundreds of submissions to the same programming ex-ercises, as these need to be kept after automatically pro-cessed for possible subsequent manual revision. Our dataset consists of the submissions to 16 programming exercises in Mooshak proposed in multiple years within the 2003-2020 timespan to undergraduate Computer Science students at the Faculty of Sciences from the University of Porto. In particular, we extract their code property graphs and store them as CSV files. The analysis of this data can enable, for instance, the generation of more concise and personalized feedback based on similar accepted submissions in the past, the identifica-tion of different strategies to solve a problem, the under -standing of a student's thinking process, among many other findings.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

2023

Há vida para além da Média! / Ausência de Evidência (Estatística) Não é evidência de Ausência

Authors
Bruno M P M Oliveira;

Publication

Abstract

2023

Design Recommendations for Improving Immersion in Role-Playing Video Games: A Focus on Storytelling and Localisation

Authors
Cesário V.; Ribeiro M.; Coelho A.;

Publication
Interaction Design and Architecture(s)

Abstract
This article investigates the role of storytelling in video game localisation and its impact on players’ immersion and overall gaming experience. While these topics have been extensively studied and developed within the research community, there is still a lack of information combining them in a practical study specific to a particular genre or video game. Using grounded theory, we conducted a study using The Witcher III: Wild Hunt as a case study (role-playing game). We had 41 participants play the video game in two localised versions (English and Brazilian-Portuguese), complete questionnaires, and be interviewed about their gameplay experience after each version. The results provided design recommendations to enhance video game immersion (language and voice-acting) and highlight certain aspects that game designers should consider to further intensify players’ immersion during gameplay.

2023

Nyon: A Ubiquitous Fall Detection Device for Elders

Authors
dos Santos Jesus, CS; Rosa, AR; Dionísio, RP;

Publication
Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Abstract
Falls are one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity in the elderly worldwide. This had let to the research and development of electronic fall-detection systems. We propose a complete fall-detection system, that combines a wearable device (called Nyon) and a message microservice (for email and SMS) to alert caregiver every time a fall occurs. The wearable uses a simple threshold method and has the capability of search and switch between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, using the available communication technology when a fall occurs. The results have shown that the wearable autonomy is adequate for a daily use and the server microservices are reliable and deliver a message to the caregiver every time a fall alert occurs. Several improvements are planned to increase the autonomy and range of the wearable device. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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