Abstract
Control applications are a key aspect of current industrial environments. Regarding cork industries, there is a particular process that needs to be addressed: the cork stoppers drying. Currently the methodology used in this process delays the overall production cycle and lacks in the drying efficiency itself. This paper presents the development of a cork stopper drying system based on the control of a conveyor based machine using Model Predictive Control (MPC). Throughout the project itwas also developed a drying kineticsmodel for the cork stoppers and an extension of such model to a discrete space state model. By applying the proposed methodology it is assured the cork stoppers’ drying in a faster and more efficient way. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper provides an overview of the expected role that variable speed hydro power plants can have in future electric power systems characterized by a massive integration of highly variable sources. Therefore, it is discussed the development of a methodology for optimising the operation of hydropower plants under increasing contribution from new renewable energy sources, addressing the participation of a hydropower plant with variable speed pumping in reserve markets. Complementarily, it is also discussed the active role variable speed generators can have in the provision of advanced frequency regulation services.

Abstract
' In this paper, a market-based control scheme is proposed to determine the minimum billing cost of responsive demands with the minimum impact on their satisfaction. For this purpose, the responsive demands are modeled as agents who bid to the energy market. In the model, the financial compensation provided by the market motivates the responsive demands to shift their load to off-peak periods. Since dissatisfaction is caused by the deviation from the reference consumption, the responsive demands' bids are dependent on the level of satisfaction that consumers are willing to have. Numerical results reveal that the billing cost of these customers is meaningfully decreased compared to the uncontrolled approaches. In addition, the results are compared to the centralized aggregation-based approach, in which a demand response aggregation entity directly buys energy on behalf of responsive demands in the market. The results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized market-based scheme.

Abstract
In this work a numerical model related to an optical inclinometer is presented. This model is based on a fused fiber taper monitored in the transmitted power. Comparisons are made between the numerical and experimental results and it is demonstrated good agreement with them. Thus, the model is proven to be suitable to simulate variation of parameters in order to obtain better performance of the sensor response. The numerical results demonstrate that is possible to enhance the inclinometer sensitivity by varying the legnth and waist of the taper. It is obtained a sensitivity of about 0,7 dB/degree using a taper length and waist of 1200 mu m and 30 mu m, respectively, at an angular range of 35 to 45 degrees.

Abstract
Given a retinal image, can we automatically determine whether it is of high quality (suitable for medical diagnosis)? Can we also explain our decision, pinpointing the region or regions that led to our decision? Images from human retinas are vital for the diagnosis of multiple health issues, like hypertension, diabetes, and Alzheimer's; low quality images may force the patient to come back again for a second scanning, wasting time and possibly delaying treatment. However, existing retinal image quality assessment methods are either black boxes without explanations of the results or depend heavily on feature engineering or on complex and error-prone anatomical structures' segmentation. Therefore, we propose EyeQual, that solves exactly this problem. EyeQual is novel, fast for inference, accurate and explainable, pinpointing low-quality regions on the image. We evaluated EyeQual on two real datasets where it achieved 100% accuracy taking just 36 milliseconds for each image.