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Publicações

2019

Enhancing Electric Energy Systems Final Project through Real Engineering Design Problems

Autores
Travassos Valdez, MT; Machado Ferreira, CM; Maciel Barbosa, FPM;

Publicação
PROCEEDINGS OF 2019 IEEE GLOBAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION CONFERENCE (EDUCON)

Abstract
Close collaboration between schools and industry can lead to better results, providing effective improvements in electrical engineering education. The Electric Energy Systems Projects whenever possible should be developed under a cooperation agreement with an industry partner or with an institution, in order that the students have the opportunity to apply the knowledge and techniques learned in the academic course. The ability to design, fabricate and test, providing hands-on experience is very valued by the students and is the essential part of the paradigm of engineering. This paper describes how real engineering design problems were integrated in Electric Energy Systems final project and the learning methodologies that were applied to achieve this purpose.

2019

Shopping Centre Patronage: Situational Factors Against Affect

Autores
Brito, PQ; McGoldrick, PJ; Raut, UR;

Publicação
VISION-THE JOURNAL OF BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract
The objective of this study is to understand to what extent hedonic and utilitarian consumer profiles are affected by situational factors and how in turn they impact shopping centre patronage. A six step multiple regression analysis corresponding to six different shopping centres has been applied to two clusters of consumers. The data are based on consumers' hedonic/utilitarian customer profile. First, results show that in general the impact on shopping centre patronage is largely affected by proximity, convenience and accessibility variables, which are more relevant among the utilitarian profile consumers. On the other hand, in the hedonic profile segment, affect, that is, the experience of feeling or emotion is the relevant variable explaining patronage. Second, the predictive contribution of these variables on patronage varied according to the shopping centres' positioning. With the findings of the present study, retail managers can formulate marketing strategies, which will attract retail consumers towards their shopping centre and also help them to enhance the significant factors that influence retail store consumer's purchase decision. Also, this investigation contributes to the diagnosis of how consistent is the retailers' in their positioning strategy in targeting the market segments. The present research integrates both situational factors and hedonic as well as utilitarian consumer profiles along with the role of situational dynamics to explain shopping centres' patronage.

2019

A brief overview of the use of collaborative robots in industry 4.0: Human role and safety

Autores
Bragança, S; Costa, E; Castellucci, I; Arezes, PM;

Publicação
Studies in Systems, Decision and Control

Abstract
Industry 4.0 is a new industrial paradigm that brings new challenges for workers as they have to actively collaborate with robots in an interconnected environment. The main purpose of this paper is to give a brief overview of how collaborative robots can be used to support human workers in Industry 4.0 manufacturing environments. The use of collaborative robots certainly brings many advantages as these machines enable more efficient product systems by supporting workers with both physical and cognitive tasks, as is the case of exoskeletons. On the other hand, human–robot interaction might also have some risks if human factors considerations are not well thought through throughout the process. Moreover, it becomes clear that the role that humans have been playing so far in a manufacturing environment is rapidly changing. Human workers will have to adapt to these new systems by acquiring and improving a set of skills that have sometime been neglected until nowadays. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.

2019

Digital Media and Newspapers' Content Distribution Strategies: A Case Study

Autores
Lima, AM; Teixeira, S; Barbosa, B;

Publicação
VISION 2025: EDUCATION EXCELLENCE AND MANAGEMENT OF INNOVATIONS THROUGH SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Abstract
This paper aims at understanding newspapers' content distribution strategies in the digital era, by considering whether digital media is used to segment content according to target audiences and to the particular characteristics of each medium. Case study was the method adopted, and the analysis focused on Jornal de Noticias (JN), which was the first Portuguese non-specialist daily newspaper to go digital and to update its online edition on a daily basis. 20 years later, it is still one of the strongest online players in the industry in Portugal. For the purposes of this study, JN's online content and strategy were analyzed for four weeks between August and September 2016. For data triangulation purposes, an interview was conducted with the person in charge of JN's digital channels. It can be concluded that despite conducting a clear online strategy, this medium still privileges the paper version of the newspaper namely due to the monetization constraints, as admittedly it could not survive exclusively from the online business. The study also demonstrates that an effective digital strategy demands considerable resources and digital skills (e.g., data analysis) that are not easily reconciled with the offline strategy needs. Hence, JN is shown as a hard news newspaper using distinct approaches in the online and offline channel that could be summarized as "hard for paper, soft for social network sites".

2019

Gesture based alternative to control recreational UAV

Autores
Ribeiro, R; Safadinho, D; Ramos, J; Rodrigues, N; Reis, A; Pereira, A;

Publicação
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Abstract
The arrival of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to the consumer market has been changing the way we interact with our surroundings. Fields like cinema and photography are improving with the possibility of reaching unsafe areas, as much as industry related companies that can now supervise their infrastructures safely. Besides many other professional areas, this fever also got into sports and UAV racing became a new way to compete. There are limited alternatives to control a UAV, each one with its pros and cons. The most reliable is the conventional handheld controller, a bulky equipment that requires practice and dexterity to be a good pilot. Consequently, technologically illiterate individuals, users with low dexterity or hand malformations and elders are departed from this game breaking technology, either for professional or recreational purposes. To expand the control of UAV to more member of our society, a different control equipment should be developed. In this paper we propose a solution based in two lightweight hand worn devices sensitive to motion changes. These changes are used to detect modifications in the orientation of the device, which are then transmitted through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to a mobile app that is responsible for their interpretation as simple input or input patterns. The result of this interpretation should be used as flight commands to control a UAV. Through simple and intuitive hand movements, users can accurately pilot a quadcopter. This alternative presents a new and easier approach to control UAV that decreases the time that is required to learn how to use it, with the outcomes of an accentuated learning curve. The results obtained with the usability tests performed with users with different capacities of interaction, confirmed the viability of this solution, as much as its simplicity and intuition in the control. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.

2019

Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration of Customized Single-Row Accelerators

Autores
Paulino, NMC; Ferreira, JC; Cardoso, JMP;

Publicação
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VERY LARGE SCALE INTEGRATION (VLSI) SYSTEMS

Abstract
The use of specialized accelerator circuits is a feasible solution to address performance and energy issues in embedded systems. This paper extends a previous field-programmable gate array-based approach that automatically generates pipelined customized loop accelerators (CLAs) from runtime instruction traces. Despite efficient acceleration, the approach suffered from high area and resource requirements when offloading a large number of kernels from the target application. This paper addresses this by enhancing the CLA with dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) support. Each kernel to accelerate is implemented as a variant of a reconfigurable area of the CLA which hosts all functional units and configuration memory. Evaluation of the proposed system is performed on a Virtex-7 device. We show, for a set of 21 kernels, that when comparing two CLAs capable of accelerating the same subset of kernels, the one which benefits from DPR can be up to 4.3x smaller. Resorting to DPR allows for the implementation of CLAs which support numerous kernels without a significant decrease in operating frequency and does not affect the initiation intervals at which kernels are scheduled. Finally, the area required by a CLA instance can be further reduced by increasing the IIs of the scheduled kernels.

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