Browsing by Author "Silva, Manuel F."
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- Active Learning Strategies for Sustainable Engineering: The case of the European Project Semester at ISEPPublication . Duarte, Abel J.; Malheiro, Benedita; Silva, Manuel F.; Ferreira, Paulo; Guedes, PedroEngineering 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.
- Airfoil Selection and Wingsail Design for an Autonomous SailboatPublication . Silva, Manuel F.; Malheiro, Benedita; Guedes, Pedro; Ferreira, PauloOcean exploration and monitoring with autonomous platforms can provide researchers and decision makers with valuable data, trends and insights into the largest ecosystem on Earth. Regardless of the recognition of the importance of such platforms in this scenario, their design and development remains an open challenge. In particular, energy efficiency, control and robustness are major concerns with implications in terms of autonomy and sustainability. Wingsails allow autonomous boats to navigate with increased autonomy, due to lower power consumption, and greater robustness, due to simpler control. Within the scope of a project that addresses the design, development and deployment of a rigid wing autonomous sailboat to perform long term missions in the ocean, this paper summarises the general principles for airfoil selection and wingsail design in robotic sailing, and are given some insights on how these aspects influence the autonomous sailboat being developed by the authors.
- An overview of pruning and harvesting manipulatorsPublication . Tinoco, Vítor; Silva, Manuel F.; Santos, Filipe N.; Valente, António; Rocha, Luís F.; Magalhães, Sandro A.; Santos, Luis C.Purpose – The motivation for robotics research in the agricultural field has sparked in consequence of the increasing world population and decreasing agricultural labor availability. This paper aims to analyze the state of the art of pruning and harvesting manipulators used in agriculture. Design/methodology/approach – A research was performed on papers that corresponded to specific keywords. Ten papers were selected based on a set of attributes that made them adequate for review. Findings – The pruning manipulators were used in two different scenarios: grapevines and apple trees. These manipulators showed that a lightcontrolled environment could reduce visual errors and that prismatic joints on the manipulator are advantageous to obtain a higher reach. The harvesting manipulators were used for three types of fruits: strawberries, tomatoes and apples. These manipulators revealed that different kinematic configurations are required for different kinds of end-effectors, as some of these tools only require movement in the horizontal axis and others are required to reach the target with a broad range of orientations. Originality/value – This work serves to reduce the gap in the literature regarding agricultural manipulators and will support new developments of novel solutions related to agricultural robotic grasping and manipulation.
- Application of fractional calculus in engineeringPublication . Machado, J. A. Tenreiro; Jesus, Isabel S.; Barbosa, Ramiro S.; Silva, Manuel F.; Reis, CecíliaFractional Calculus (FC) goes back to the beginning of the theory of differential calculus. Nevertheless, the application of FC just emerged in the last two decades. It has been recognized the advantageous use of this mathematical tool in the modelling and control of many dynamical systems. Having these ideas in mind, this paper discusses a FC perspective in the study of the dynamics and control of several systems. The paper investigates the use of FC in the fields of controller tuning, legged robots, electrical systems and digital circuit synthesis.
- Artistic Robot – An EPS@ISEP 2016 ProjectPublication . Dziomdziora, Adam; Sin, Daniel Nicolae; Robertson, Fraser; Mänysalo, Mikko; Pattiselano, Nona; Duarte, Abel; Malheiro, Benedita; Ribeiro, Cristina; Ferreira, Fernando; Silva, Manuel F.; Ferreira, Paulo; Guedes, PedroThis paper reports the design and development process of an artistic robot by a team of five engineering and design students from Belgian, Finland, Poland, Romania and Scotland. To contribute to this goal, the team designed and assembled GraphBot, a voice commanded drawing robot prototype, following the EPS@ISEP process. In addition, the team specified their target as young children and, in particular girls, and stated that their motivation was to introduce young generations to the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In terms of outcomes, this project is expected to go beyond the boundaries of the traditional development of scientific and technical competences, by providing the students with a holistic learning experience, fostering also the development of personal and inter-personal skills within a multidisciplinary and multicultural teamwork set-up.
- Automatic Segmentation of Monofilament Testing Sites in Plantar Images for Diabetic Foot ManagementPublication . Costa, Tatiana; Coelho, Luis; Silva, Manuel F.Diabetic peripheral neuropathy is a major complication of diabetes mellitus, and it is the leading cause of foot ulceration and amputations. The Semmes–Weinstein monofilament examination (SWME) is a widely used, low-cost, evidence-based tool for predicting the prognosis of diabetic foot patients. The examination can be quick, but due to the high prevalence of the disease, many healthcare professionals can be assigned to this task several days per month. In an ongoing project, it is our objective to minimize the intervention of humans in the SWME by using an automated testing system relying on computer vision. In this paper we present the project’s first part, constituting a system for automatically identifying the SWME testing sites from digital images. For this, we have created a database of plantar images and developed a segmentation system, based on image processing and deep learning—both of which are novelties. From the 9 testing sites, the system was able to correctly identify most 8 in more than 80% of the images, and 3 of the testing sites were correctly identified in more than 97.8% of the images.
- Biomechanical study of the Spider Crab as inspiration for the development of a biomimetic robotPublication . Rynkevic, Rita; Silva, Manuel F.; Marques, M. ArcelinaA 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.
- Cascade Control of a Hexapod RobotPublication . Silva, Manuel F.This paper analyzes the performance of hexapod robot under the action of a cascade controller involving position and force feedback loops. In order to evaluate the system properties we formulate several measures of the walking system based on the system dynamics and the trajectory errors. Simulation experiments reveal the influence of the different control algorithms upon the proposed indices.
- Cattle Monitoring Blimp – An EPS@ISEP 2023 ProjectPublication . Blommestijn, Krijn; Dallongeville, Kylian; Paulsen, Maximilian; Mamos, Michal; Gupta, Sonia; Duarte, Abel J.; Malheiro, Benedita; Ribeiro, Cristina; Justo, Jorge; Silva, Manuel F.; Ferreira, Paulo; Guedes, PedroThis paper describes the project based learning experience of a multidisciplinary and multicultural team of students enrolled in the spring of 2023 on the European Project Semester at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (EPS@ISEP). Animo is an original blimp based concept that aims to help farmers better manage their livestock. Its development was motivated by the difficulty to effectively monitor cattle herds over vast areas, especially in remote locations where locating animals is challenging. This environmentally friendly solution offers real-time livestock monitoring without thermal engines. Real-time monitoring is achieved through the blimp's extensive animal data collection. Farmers may discover and handle quickly herd welfare issues by accessing information via a user-friendly App. With an emphasis on accessibility and environmental sustainability, Animo seeks to increase agricultural productivity and profitability. The user controls the blimp motion through the app to obtain a comprehensive farm view. Targeting Australia's large cattle stations, it aims to enhance productivity while minimising the environmental impact.
- Citizen Engagement in Urban Planning – An EPS@ISEP 2022 ProjectPublication . Cardani, Carla G.; Couzyn, Carmen; Degouilles, Eliott; Benner, Jan M.; Engst, Julia A.; Duarte, Abel J.; Malheiro, Benedita; Ribeiro, Cristina; Justo, Jorge; Silva, Manuel F.; Ferreira, Paulo; Guedes, PedroInvolving people in urban planning offers many benefits, but current methods are failing to get a large number of citizens to participate. People have a high participation barrier when it comes to public participation in urban planning – as it requires a lot of time and initiative, only a small non-diverse group of citizens take part in governmental initiatives. In this paper, a product is developed to make it as easy as possible for citizens to get involved in construction projects in their community at an early stage. As a solution, a public screen is proposed, which offers citizens the opportunity to receive information, view 3D models, vote and comment at the site of the construction project via smartphone – the solution was named Parcitypate. To explain the functions of the product, a prototype was created and tested. In addition, concepts for branding, marketing, ethics, and sustainability are presented.