Abstract
The following topics are dealt with: mobile robots; multi-robot systems; path planning; robot vision; service robots; collision avoidance; learning (artificial intelligence); legged locomotion; control engineering computing; production engineering computing.

Abstract
Rat’s gait analysis plays an important role in the assessment of the impact of certain drugs on the treatment of osteoarthritis. Since movement-evoked pain is an early characteristic of this degenerative joint disease, the affected animal modifies its behavior to protect the injured joint from load while walking, altering its gait’s parameters, which can be detected through a video analysis. Because commercially available video-based gait systems still present many limitations, researchers often choose to develop a customized system for the acquisition of the videos and analyze them manually, a laborious and time-consuming task prone to high user variability. Therefore, and bearing in mind the recent advances in machine learning and computer vision fields, as well as their presence in many tracking and recognition applications, this work is driven by the need to find a solution to automate the detection and quantification of the animal’s gait changes making it an easier, faster, simpler and more robust task. Thus, a comparison between different methodologies to detect and segment the animal under degraded luminance conditions is presented in this paper as well as an algorithm to detect, segment and classify the animal’s paws.

Abstract
This paper proposes a mixed integer linear programming model for a multi-product ordering in a three-echelon supply chain network, where multiple manufacturers supply multiple warehouses with multiple products, which in turn distribute the products to the multiple retailers involved. The model considers practical production constraints such as production capacity, backorder allowances, and economically-viable minimum order quantities. Numerical computations show that the model can efficiently solve small-sized problem instances. © 2019, IEOM Society International.

Abstract
There are two recognized tendencies in electricity markets: the development of spot markets and the increase of renewable electricity generation. These tendencies create dynamics in both price and volatility. In Portugal, there are powerful support schemes for renewable electricity. Therefore, the main sources for generating electricity in Portugal are renewable. This paper analyzes ex-post the impact of energy produced in special regime on the wholesale hourly spot market prices of Portuguese electricity during the period 2009-2016. It finds that special regime generation has a negative impact on the wholesale price. Effectively, an increase of special regime generation by 1.0 GWh, all else being equal, reduces the wholesale spot price by 3.9 (sic)/MWh. This represents 8.6% of the average wholesale price. Moreover, the substitution of 1.0 GWh of coal generation for special regime sources has an impact on electricity spot prices of, on average, -15.96 (sic)/MWh. This paper also concludes that using special regime generation to supply the future growth of demand will decrease wholesale electricity spot prices more intensively than using other technologies.

Abstract
In small and rural regions, where we can many times find top quality products, there is, many times, a greater difficulty in promoting their products. This difficulty begins in the nature of the companies that manufacture these products. These companies are typically family-owned or small-sized, not having large capacity to carry out very elaborate marketing strategies. They often depend of the tourist attractiveness of the regions themselves to leverage their sales. This paper discuss the challenges for the promotion of regional products and rural regions, review the role of smartphones and the main tag-based contextualization mechanisms and their potential for leverage the sale of rural regional products and, finally, presents a cooperation-based conceptual model, where are combined contextualization-tags and mobile devices to promote regional products, leverage sales and promote rural regions by attracting new visitants, making regional products a window-mechanism to the promotion of rural regions heritage and tourism-related services.

Abstract
The Wi-Fi networks are more and more omnipresent in our quotidian. It is a cheap technology that is available in many places, public or private (e.g.: schools, hospitals, public transports). The vulgarization of this technology is related to the impact that the concept of Internet of Things (IoT) has been having during the last years, revolutionizing the way to interact with “things”. The use of Unmanned Vehicles (UV) tends to increase, for ludic or professional ends. These vehicles allow to assist and minimize the human intervention in many situations, but one of the associated problems settles in their communication architecture that needs the use of an ad-hoc remote controller that restricts the control area. This work intends to explore the ESP8266 microcontroller to control a UV over a Wi-Fi connection. Three architectures that support the interaction with the vehicle are presented and specified. The real test scenario validated all the described architectures to control the vehicles. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.