Pedro Guedes

Abstract
Each year millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans, lakes and rivers. In the spring of 2020, an European Project Semester team, composed of multicultural and multidisciplinary undergraduate students, decided to tackle this problem. This was achieved by designing, modelling and simulating a floating trash collector named Soaksy. The collector is expected to operate continuously and automatically on lakes at the view of everybody, becoming an educational and an environmental tool. This paper reports the team’s journey from the initial studies, through the design, till the final simulation and tests.

Abstract
This paper reports the research and design of a foldable disaster shelter for people left homeless due to natural disasters, by a multinational team composed of six students, from six different countries. The team was enrolled in the European Project Semester (EPS), a project-based capstone programme offered by Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), to students who have completed at least two years of undergraduate studies. The main objective of the project was to design, simulate and test an ethics and sustainability driven foldable shelter. This goal was pursued by conducting a series of studies to derive the solution requirements, involving a survey on shelter concepts and solutions, a review on worldwide natural disasters, as well as an analysis of the shelter market. The latter led to the definition of a business plan, a marketing strategy, a logo and a brand name. The solution comes with a Web application to help rescue organisations to follow the scheduled maintenance plan and keep track of the deployed units.

Abstract
This paper reports the development of WalkSafe, a Smart Pedestrian Crossing solution, by a multinational and multidisciplinary team of students during the spring semester of 2020. The team was enrolled in the European Project Semester (EPS), a project-based capstone programme offered by Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP). Motivated by the idea to reduce the number of pedestrians hit by cars at road crossings, and associated injuries and deaths, the team surveyed pedestrian behaviour to conclude that people often ignore pedestrian crossings. Thus, this project intended to motivate people to use pedestrian crossings, increasing the safety of both pedestrians and drivers. The proposed solution can be implemented on any pedestrian crossing and involves up to three components: (i) a box to be fixed on each side of pedestrian crossings with a radio-frequency identification reader as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi interfaces; (ii) a smartphone mobile app; and (iii) a personal bracelet for children and elderly, with a passive radio-frequency identification tag.

Abstract
Engineering aims to improve the quality of daily life on a planet with limited resources. This chapter describes how the European Project Semester offered by the School of Engineering of the Porto Polytechnic contributes to make engineering undergraduates conscious of their environmental and societal impact. The program is a project-based active learning framework where problem-solving is supported by intercultural communication and creativity, ethical and sustainable reasoning, and global contextual analysis. This analysis shows that it fosters scientific, technical, and interpersonal competencies, emphasizing ethical and sustainable design as recommended by several reference institutions through the testimonials left on the project reports and the evolution perceived by the participants during the semester. These findings are supported by a sample of 45 projects conducted by 228 students from 23 countries and 65 degrees. All projects aimed to have a lasting impact on the future engineering practice of participants and, somehow, transform the world positively.

Abstract
Robotics is a multidisciplinary subject that typically involves mechanics, electronics, and computer science concepts. For this reason, robotic projects are particularly well suited to the European Project Semester framework since they allow students with different backgrounds to contribute to the overall team objective in their specific knowledge areas. This chapter briefly presents illustrative examples of robotic projects that have been developed by teams of students participating in the European Project Semester at the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto. It concludes by presenting and discussing student feedback, namely on the program and the projects developed.