Abstract
This paper describes the environmental monitoring / regatta beacon buoy under development at the Laboratory of Autonomous Systems (LSA) of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto. On the one hand, environmentalmonitoring of open water bodies in real or deferred time is essential to assess and make sensible decisions and, on the other hand, the broadcast in real time of position, water and wind related parameters allows autonomous boats to optimise their regatta performance. This proposal, rather than restraining the boats autonomy, fosters the development of intelligent behaviour by allowing the boats to focus on regatta strategy and tactics. The Nautical and Telemetric Application (NAUTA) buoy is a dual mode reconfigurable system that includes communications, control, data logging, sensing, storage and power subsystems. In environmental monitoring mode, the buoy gathers and stores data from several underwater and above water sensors and, in regatta mode, the buoy becomes an active course mark for the autonomous sailing boats in the vicinity. During a race, the buoy broadcasts its position, together with the wind and the water current local conditions, allowing autonomous boats to navigate towards and round the mark successfully. This project started with the specification of the requirements of the dual mode operation, followed by the design and building of the buoy structure. The research is currently focussed on the development of the modular, reconfigurable, open source-based control system. The NAUTA buoy is innovative, extensible and optimises the on board platform resources.

Abstract
Tire inspection is presently done by workers who have as their main problems, besides identifying the defects, the time available for defect identification and the inherent costs. Companies can become more sustainable by adopting automated methods to perform such type of processes, such as artificial vision, with advantages both in the processing time and in the incurred costs. This paper addresses the development of an artificial vision system that aims to be an asset in the field of tyre inspection, having as main characteristics its execution speed and its reliability. The conjugation of these criteria is a prerequisite for this system to be able to be integrated in inspection machines. The paper focusses on the study of three image processing methods to be used in the identification of marks (red dots) on tires. In this work was used the free Open Computer Vision artificial vision library to process the images acquired by a Basler matrix camera. Two different techniques, namely Background Subtraction and Hough Transform, were tested to implement the solution. After developing the artificial vision inspection application, tests were made to measure the performance of both methods and the results were promising: processing time was low and, simultaneous, the achieved accuracy is high.

Abstract
This work aims to apply the concepts associated with neural networks in the control of an autonomous robot system. The robot was tested in several arbitrary paths in order to verify the effectiveness of the neural control. The results show that the robot performed the tasks with success. Moreover, in the case of arbitrary paths the neural control outperforms other methodologies, such as fuzzy logic control.

Abstract
Presently we are witnessing an increasing adoption of industrial robots, with predictions for their further dissemination in distinct sectors. Some studies show that there is a lack of people able to plan the introduction of these equipments in manufacturing environments and to operate them after its inception, leading to the need to train undergraduates in the operation and programming of industrial robots. Due to the Portuguese economic situation, there is a lack of funding for the Higher Education Institutions, leading to the need of finding innovative ways to teach these subjects. Bearing these ideas in mind, ISEP began teaching a course on Industrial Robotics based in the achievement of the practical training using ABB RobotStudio (from ABB Robotics) robot simulation software for off-line programming. This paper describes the main results of such experience and the evaluation of the course made by the students who have attended this course. The results of surveys conducted to the students after the end of the course show the excellent acceptance that this course format has achieved among them, the good results that have been achieved in terms of their knowledge acquisition, and has allowed the author to get students feedback in order to introduce improvements in the course.

Abstract
Following the successful results obtained in the previous editions of the TEEM Conference, a new edition of this event was held at ISEP/IPP - School of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Porto -, on October 7-9, 2015. The TEEM Conference was organized in thematic tracks, being one of them devoted to the topic of "Robotics in Education". This topic tries to strengthen different skills for future engineers/scientists by the means of the design, construction and programming of robots. These skills are related to various fields like science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Also, and equally important, the introduction of the robot in the classroom, both at school and college and even as extracurricular activity, promotes a host of outcomes such as technological fluency, creativity, participation, support, collaboration and cooperation. The purpose of the track "A Robot in the Classroom" was to bring together researchers, teachers and practitioners interested in the Robotics in Education. This track emphasized the exchange of experiences, methodologies and materials to motivate students about science and technology.

Abstract
A problem faced by oil companies is the maintenance of the location register of pipelines that cross the surf zone, the regular survey of their location, and also their inspection. A survey of the state of art did not allow identifying operating systems capable of executing such tasks. Commercial technologies available on the market also do not address this problem and/or do not satisfy the presented requirements. A possible solution is to use robotic systems which have the ability to walk on the shore and in the surf zone, subject to existing currents and ripples, and being able to withstand these ambient conditions. In this sense, the authors propose the development of a spider crab biologically inspired robot to achieve those tasks. Based on these ideas, this work presents a biomechanical study of the spider crab, its modeling and simulation using the SimMechanics toolbox of Matlab/Simulink, which is the first phase of this more vast project. Results show a robot model that is moving in an "animal like" manner, the locomotion, the algorithm presented in this paper allows the crab to walk sideways, in the desired direction.