Study on the development of an autonomous mobile robot

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Eletrotécnica e de Computadores

Machine learning Gaussian short rate

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Estatística e Gestão do Risco

Estudo para a implementação de um sitema de e/b-learning no Centro de Formação da RTP

Trabalho de Projeto apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Gestão de Sistemas de e-­‐Learning

O treino da expressão oral, estratégias em E-learning

Trabalho de Projeto apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Gestão de Sistemas de E‐learning

Haptic robot-environment interaction for self-supervised learning in ground mobility

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Eletrotécnica e de Computadores

Integração de um Modelo de Aprendizagem em Blended-Learning no Curso de Informática Educativa, do Instituto Superior de Ciências da Educação da Huíla

Trabalho de Projecto apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Gestão de Sistema de E-learning

Personal Learning Environments – Um Ecossistema de Aprendizagem em e-Learning

Esta investigação tem como tema de estudo os ambientes pessoais de aprendizagem que se podem desenvolver em e-learning. Estes ambientes com características singulares, face ao atual estado de desenvolvimento tecnológico e social, têm sido designados na doutrina científica pela expressão anglo-saxónica Personal Learning Environments, da qual derivam os acrónimos PLE ou PLEs. Este estudo tem, como objetivo, compreender o papel dos PLEs na aprendizagem dos alunos da parte letiva do Mestrado em Gestão de Sistemas de e-Learning, da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, nos biénios que decorreram de 2010-2011 a 2012-2013. Estes alunos, ao longo da sua aprendizagem, utilizaram várias ferramentas e/ou serviços associados com as TIC e Web 2.0. Esta utilização permitiu aos alunos criarem um ecossistema de aprendizagem próprio. A metodologia de investigação utilizada teve em consideração sobretudo aspetos qualitativos. A estratégia utilizada para a recolha de informações foi o inquérito por questionário. As informações recolhidas foram sujeitas a tratamento estatístico descritivo, e posterior triangulação dos resultados de algumas das variáveis.Dos resultados obtidos, é possível concluir que os alunos do Mestrado criaram os seus próprios PLEs e que estes facilitaram as suas aprendizagens. Que a sua utilização conferiu vantagens aos alunos. Que os PLEs foram fundamentais para poderem desenvolver atividades colaborativas, e que criaram um ecossistema próprio, uma rede de troca de conhecimentos.

2D position system for a mobile robot in unstructured environments

Nowadays, several sensors and mechanisms are available to estimate a mobile robot trajectory and location with respect to its surroundings. Usually absolute positioning mechanisms are the most accurate, but they also are the most expensive ones, and require pre installed equipment in the environment. Therefore, a system capable of measuring its motion and location within the environment (relative positioning) has been a research goal since the beginning of autonomous vehicles. With the increasing of the computational performance, computer vision has become faster and, therefore, became possible to incorporate it in a mobile robot. In visual odometry feature based approaches, the model estimation requires absence of feature association outliers for an accurate motion. Outliers rejection is a delicate process considering there is always a trade-off between speed and reliability of the system. This dissertation proposes an indoor 2D position system using Visual Odometry. The mobile robot has a camera pointed to the ceiling, for image analysis. As requirements, the ceiling and the oor (where the robot moves) must be planes. In the literature, RANSAC is a widely used method for outlier rejection. However, it might be slow in critical circumstances. Therefore, it is proposed a new algorithm that accelerates RANSAC, maintaining its reliability. The algorithm, called FMBF, consists on comparing image texture patterns between pictures, preserving the most similar ones. There are several types of comparisons, with different computational cost and reliability. FMBF manages those comparisons in order to optimize the trade-off between speed and reliability.

English Language Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom in Portugal

This study investigates the way of learning the English language in Portugal. First-year students of the faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of New University of Lisbon were selected as participants in the case study. As data collection tools a questionnaire and focus-groups were used. 115 students completed the designed questionnaire and after that 12 students were selected for the more detailed focus-group discussions. Results of the research show that most part of the students´ English knowledge is received from outside the classroom by means of movies, songs, computer games, the Internet, communication with friends and other sources. Also, the results show that motivation is very important in language learning process and motivated students acquire the language faster and easier.

Combining WLAN fingerprint-based localization with sensor data for indoor navigation using mobile devices

This project proposes an approach for supporting Indoor Navigation Systems using Pedestrian Dead Reckoning-based methods and by analyzing motion sensor data available in most modern smartphones. Processes suggested in this investigation are able to calculate the distance traveled by a user while he or she is walking. WLAN fingerprint- based navigation systems benefit from the processes followed in this research and results achieved to reduce its workload and improve its positioning estimations.

Learning Activities with Semantic. Hypermedia in Higher Education

The increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in diverse professional and personal contexts calls for new knowledge, and a set of abilities, competences and attitudes, for an active and participative citizenship. In this context it is acknowledged that universities have an important role innovating in the educational use of digital media to promote an inclusive digital literacy. The educational potential of digital technologies and resources has been recognized by both researchers and practitioners. Multiple pedagogical models and research approaches have already contributed to put in evidence the importance of adapting instructional and learning practices and processes to concrete contexts and educational goals. Still, academic and scientific communities believe further investments in ICT research is needed in higher education. This study focuses on educational models that may contribute to support digital technology uses, where these can have cognitive and educational relevance when compared to analogical technologies. A teaching and learning model, centered in the active role of the students in the exploration, production, presentation and discussion of interactive multimedia materials, was developed and applied using the internet and exploring emergent semantic hypermedia formats. The research approach focused on the definition of design principles for developing class activities that were applied in three different iterations in undergraduate courses from two institutions, namely the University of Texas at Austin, USA and the University of Lisbon, Portugal. The analysis of this study made possible to evaluate the potential and efficacy of the model proposed and the authoring tool chosen in the support of metacognitive skills and attitudes related to information structuring and management, storytelling and communication, using computers and the internet.

The consumption of media contents through mobile devices in Finland

O campo dos media na Finlândia encontra-se num processo de mudanças aparentemente imparáveis, com os dispositivos móveis, tal como os smartphones e tablets, a influenciarem cada vez mais os padrões de produção e consumo de media. Nesta dissertação é defendido que esta situação é influenciada por factores históricos, sociais e culturais: desde os livros e jornais como meio de manter a língua finlandesa até aos benefícios da Segurança Social que permitiram que até as pessoas com menos rendimentos comprassem o jornal para se manterem a par dos desenvolvimentos do país, bem como a grande tradição de leitura que é associada aos finlandeses, assim como as condições que ao longo da história fazem fizeram com que os finlandeses sejam fascinados pelas novas tecnologias. Adicionalmente, presto especial atenção às estratégias que são adoptadas pelas cada vez mais convergentes companhias de media para enfrentarem a competição de elementos como os social media.

Learning facial-expression models with crowdsourcing

The computational power is increasing day by day. Despite that, there are some tasks that are still difficult or even impossible for a computer to perform. For example, while identifying a facial expression is easy for a human, for a computer it is an area in development. To tackle this and similar issues, crowdsourcing has grown as a way to use human computation in a large scale. Crowdsourcing is a novel approach to collect labels in a fast and cheap manner, by sourcing the labels from the crowds. However, these labels lack reliability since annotators are not guaranteed to have any expertise in the field. This fact has led to a new research area where we must create or adapt annotation models to handle these weaklylabeled data. Current techniques explore the annotators’ expertise and the task difficulty as variables that influences labels’ correction. Other specific aspects are also considered by noisy-labels analysis techniques. The main contribution of this thesis is the process to collect reliable crowdsourcing labels for a facial expressions dataset. This process consists in two steps: first, we design our crowdsourcing tasks to collect annotators labels; next, we infer the true label from the collected labels by applying state-of-art crowdsourcing algorithms. At the same time, a facial expression dataset is created, containing 40.000 images and respective labels. At the end, we publish the resulting dataset.

Teleoperation of a service robot using a mobile device

Teleoperation is a concept born with the rapid evolution of technology, with an intuitive meaning "operate at a distance." The first teleoperation system was created in the mid 1950s, which were handled chemicals. Remote controlled systems are present nowadays in various types of applications. This dissertation presents the development of a mobile application to perform the teleoperation of a mobile service robot. The application integrates a distributed surveillance (the result of a research project QREN) and led to the development of a communication interface between the robot (the result of another QREN project) and the vigilance system. It was necessary to specify a communication protocol between the two systems, which was implemented over a communication framework 0MQ (Zero Message Queue). For the testing, three prototype applications were developed before to perform the test on the robot.