Antonio Valente

• Professor, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro

The present article explores the impact of educational robotics on fostering computational thinking and problem-solving skills in elementary school students through a problem-based learning approach. This study involved the creation of a framework which includes a robot and two eBooks designed for students and teachers. The eBooks serve as a guide...

Pollination is critical for crop development, especially those essential for subsistence. This study addresses the pollination challenges faced by Actinidia, a dioecious plant characterized by female and male flowers on separate plants. Despite the high protein content of pollen, the absence of nectar in kiwifruit flowers poses difficulties in attr...

This paper presents an efficient and secure method for updating firmware in IoT devices using LoRaWAN network resources and communication protocols. The proposed method involves dividing the firmware into fragments, storing them in the application server’s database, and transmitting them to remote IoT devices via downlink messages, without necessit...

With the increasing adoption of mobile robots for transporting components across several locations in industries, congestion problems appear if the movement of these robots is not correctly planned. This paper introduces a fleet management system where a central agent coordinates, plans, and supervises the fleet, mitigating the risk of deadlocks an...

Water is essential at various stages of winemaking, from irrigation in the vineyard to cleaning equipment and facilities, controlling fermentation temperatures, and diluting grape juice if necessary. Additionally, water is used for sanitation purposes to ensure the quality and safety of the final product. This article provides an overview of the ex...

Smart home devices are becoming more popular over the years. A diverse range of appliances is being created, and Ambient Intelligence is growing in homes. However, there are various producers of these gadgets, different kinds of protocols, and diverse environments. The lack of interoperability reduces comfort of the user and turns into a barrier to...

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as valuable tools in precision agriculture due to their ability to provide timely and detailed information over large agricultural areas. In this sense, this work aims to evaluate the semi-autonomous navigation capacity of a multirotor UAV when applied in the field of precision agriculture. For this, a s...

This article presents a new firmware update paradigm for optimising the procedure in microcontrollers. The aim is to allow updating during program execution, without interruptions or restarts, replacing only specific code segments. The proposed method uses static and absolute addresses to locate and isolate the code segment to be updated. The work...

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is becoming increasingly important in advanced production systems, such as those used in industries and agriculture. This type of collaboration can contribute to productivity increase by reducing physical strain on humans, which can lead to reduced injuries and improved morale. One crucial aspect of HRC is the abilit...

People are living longer, promoting new challenges in healthcare. Many older adults prefer to age in their own homes rather than in healthcare institutions. Portugal has seen a similar trend, and public and private home care solutions have been developed. However, age-related pathologies can affect an elderly person’s ability to perform daily tasks...

This paper presents an approach to address the challenges of manual inspection using multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to detect olive tree flies (Bactrocera oleae). The study employs computer vision techniques based on the You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm to detect insects trapped in yellow chromotropic traps. Therefore, this research e...

Changes in climatic patterns hinder the prediction of water availability, being imperative to develop new strategies to optimise water management in the agricultural sector. A multi-sensor network is being developed by ADVID/CoLAB VINES&WINES and University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), aiming to determine water stress in vineyards, as a...

The manual monitoring of refilling stations in industrial environments can lead to inefficiencies and errors, which can impact the overall performance of the production line. In this paper, we present an unsupervised detection pipeline for identifying refilling stations in industrial environments. The proposed pipeline uses a combination of image p...

New technical solutions are beginning to emerge, of which the Floating Solar Photovoltaic (FSPV) systems, is a promising new technology growing rapidly in the recent years. Portugal is a good example in Europe with several facilities of this type. For a correct management of these systems, and to have significant data, it is necessary to have a rel...

The world wine sector is a multi-billion dollar industry with a wide range of economic activities. Therefore, it becomes crucial to monitor the grapevine because it allows a more accurate estimation of the yield and ensures a high-quality end product. The most common way of monitoring the grapevine is through the leaves (preventive way) since the l...

Currently, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are considered in the development of various applications in agriculture, which has led to the expansion of the agricultural UAV market. However, Nano Aerial Vehicles (NAVs) are still underutilised in agriculture. NAVs are characterised by a maximum wing length of 15 centimetres and a weight of fewer than...

This study presents a novel approach to cope with the human behaviour uncertainty during Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) in dynamic and unstructured environments, such as agriculture, forestry, and construction. These challenging tasks, which often require excessive time, labour and are hazardous for humans, provide ample room for improvement throu...

The recent advances in precision agriculture are due to the emergence of modern robotics systems. For instance, unmanned aerial systems (UASs) give new possibilities that advance the solution of existing problems in this area in many different aspects. The reason is due to these platforms’ ability to perform activities at varying levels of complexi...

Navigation is one of the most important tasks for a mobile robot and the localisation is one of its main requirements. There are several types of localisation solutions such as LiDAR, Radio-frequency and acoustic among others. The well-known line follower has been a solution used for a long time ago and still remains its application, especially in...

Simulators have been increasingly used on development and tests on several areas. They allow to speed up the development without damage and no extra costs. On realistic simulators, where kinematics play an important role, the modelling process should be imported for each component to be accurately simulated. Some robots are not yet modelled, as for...

This research proposes positioning obstacle detection sensors by multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) dedicated to detailed inspections in high voltage towers. Different obstacle detection sensors are analyzed to compose a multisensory architecture in a multirotor UAV. The representation of the beam pattern of the sensors is modeled in the Co...

Life in society has initiated a search for comfort and security in social centers. This search generated revolutions within the knowledge about the technologies involved, making the environments automated and integrated. Along with this increase, ecological concerns have also arisen, which have been involved since the design of intelligent building...

This work presents a methodology for characterizing ultrasonic and LASER sensors aimed at detecting obstacles within the context of electrical inspections by multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). A set of four ultrasonic and LASER sensor models is evaluated against eight target components, typically found in high-voltage towers. The results s...

In view of the actual climate change scenario felt across the globe, resource management is crucial, especially with regard to water. In this sense, continuous monitoring of plant water status is essential to optimise not only crop management but also water resources. Currently, monitoring of vine water status is done through expensive and time-con...

A parede de Trombe é um sistema solar passivo de ganho indireto que, apesar de não constituir uma prática corrente na construção, potencia o aproveitamento da energia solar para aquecimento do espaço interior, diminuindo o recurso a equipamentos de climatização. É constituída por uma parede acumuladora composta por materiais com elevada capacidade...

This paper presents an earlier stage of development towards this ambitious goal by proposing a conceptual architecture for human-robot collaboration in challenging applications and its envisaged future direction. Field robots are adaptable and sensitive to dynamic, unstructured and, therefore, challenging environments, such as in agriculture, fores...

The proposed work was developed as part of the SmartHealth project, which aims to advance upper body rehabilitation by granting a robotic alternative to reduce the limitations of physical therapy while conferring more intensive and personalized therapy sessions for patients. The use of robots permits therapists to be relieved of laborious and repet...

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 pap...

The Internet of Things asserts that several applications, such as smart cities or intelligent agriculture, can be based on various embedded systems programmed to do different tasks, by transferring data over a network from sensors to a server, where the information is stored and treated, supporting the decision-making process. In this context, LoRa...

The European Project Semester (EPS) is a multicultural and multidisciplinary project-based learning semester offered by a network of providers, including the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP). In the spring of 2020/2021, five EPS@ISEP students from different areas of studies and countries — Portugal, Romania, Poland and France — team...

Computational thinking is the thinking process involved in formulating problems to admit a computational solution. This article describes a study in which the code.org platform was used to develop computational thinking with Elementary school students. After proper introduction and contextualization, we describe the 198 students from 4th grade invo...

Software for robotic systems is becoming progressively more complex despite the existence of established software ecosystems like ROS, as the problems we delegate to robots become more and more challenging. Ensuring that the software works as intended is a crucial (but not trivial) task, although proper quality assurance processes are rarely seen i...

The automation of agricultural processes is expected to positively impact the environment by reducing waste and increasing food security, maximising resource use. Precision spraying is a method used to reduce the losses during pesticides application, reducing chemical residues in the soil. In this work, we developed a smart and novel electric spray...

Worldwide, forests have been devastated by fires in recent years. Whe- ther by human intervention or for other reasons, the history of burned areas is increasing year after year, degrading fauna and flora. For this reason, it is vital to detect an early ignition so that firefighters can act quickly, reducing the impacts caused by forest fires. The...

Through technological advents from Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things, as well as new Big Data solutions, predictive maintenance begins to play a strategic role in the increasing operational performance of any industrial facility. Equipment failures can be very costly and have catastrophic consequences. In its basic concept, Predictive mainten...

Agricultural robotics is nowadays a complex, challenging, and relevant research topic for the sustainability of our society. Some agricultural environments present harsh conditions to robotics operability. In the case of steep-slope vineyards, there are several robotic challenges: terrain irregularities, characteristics of illumination, and inaccur...

Task Scheduling assumes an integral topic in the efficiency of multiple mobile robots systems and is a key part in most modern manufacturing systems. Advances in the field of combinatorial optimisation have allowed the implementation of algorithms capable of solving the different variants of the vehicle routing problem in relation to different obje...

The goal for a virtual reality (VR) training system is to enable trainees to acquire all the knowledge they need to perform effectively in a real environment. Such a system should provide an experience so authentic that no further real-world training is necessary, meaning that it is sufficient to train in VR. We evaluate the impact of a haptic ther...

Robotics will significantly impact large sectors of the economy with relatively low productivity, such as Agri-Food production. Deploying agricultural robots on the farm is still a challenging task. When it comes to localising the robot, there is a need for a preliminary map, which is obtained from a first robot visit to the farm. Mapping is a semi...

The physiotherapeutic process is widely discussed and of fundamental importance for the recovery of patients who suffer from any injury or adverse muscle condition. For best results, it is of primary importance that the patient maintains a pace of treatment and remains engaged in the activities required by the Physiotherapist. In this context, an a...

This project is being developed to access elder dependent people, inspired by a geriatric care management@home. According to the project’s main assessment, three stages have been completed and now, in the fourth stage, we are implementing a bio-network with several sensors that assists the caregiver in applying the therapeutic plan. At this point,...

The increasing interest in connecting small sensors to the internet has led to the development of operating systems able to support all network, graphical and server functionalities over diverse embedded hardware. Globaltronic, a company based in Portugal, has developed an embedded computer called WiiPiiDo, powered by an ARM SoC (System on a Chip),...

Intelligent agriculture in general, but especially when agricultural fields are very heterogeneous, requires a large number of sensors in order to obtain an effective control and thus increase productivity. This need becomes more evident in vineyards on the farms of the demarcated Douro region due to the specificities of the territory and the viney...

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can be used to acquire environmental variables useful for decision-making, such as agriculture and forestry. Installing a WSN on the forest will allow the acquisition of ecological variables of high importance on risk analysis and fire detection. The presented paper addresses two types of WSN developed modules that ca...

This paper presents the construction of an autonomous robot to participating in the autonomous driving competition of the National Festival of Robotics in Portugal, which relies on an open platform requiring basic knowledge of robotics, like mechanics, control, computer vision and energy management. The projet is an excellent way for teaching robot...

Forests have been harassed by fire in recent years. Whether by human action or for other reasons, the burned area has increased harming fauna and flora. It is fundamental to detect an ignition early in order to firefighters fight the fire minimizing the fire impacts. The proposed Forest Monitoring System aims to improve the nature monitoring and to...

This article reports a pedagogical experience developed within the scope of a Ph.D. program in Electrical and Computer Engineering with application to Education. Starting with a contextualization on the evolution of computers and Computational Thinking, the article describes the platform used in this study - code.org -, highlighting the strengths t...

The objective of this work is study, implementation and evaluation of compression techniques used in bioelectrical signals, applied to electroencephalography. For that, the fundamental concepts of Fast Walsh Hadamard Transform (FWHT), the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), in essence, the mathematical models w...

There are many systems for indoor navigation specially built for visually impaired people but only some has good accuracy for navigation. While there are solutions like global navigation satellite systems for the localization outdoors, problems arise in urban scenarios and indoors due to insufficient or failed signal reception. To build a support s...

The challenge of noise attenuation in images has led to extensive research on improved noise reduction techniques, preserving important image characteristics, improving not only visual perception, but also enabling the use for special purposes, such as in medicine to increase clarity of medical images. In this paper, a technique for noise attenuati...

Robotics competitions are a way to challenge researchers , roboticists and enthusiastic to address robot applications. One of the well-known international competition is the Micromouse where the fastest mobile robot to solve a maze is the winner. There are several topics addressed in this competition such as robot prototyping, control, electronics,...

Robotics competitions are increasing in complexity and number challenging the researchers, roboticists and enthusiastic to address the robot applications. One of the well-known competition is the micromouse where the fastest mobile robot to solve a maze is the winner. There are several topics addressed in this competition such as robot prototyping,...

This paper compares optimal path planning algorithms based on a Genetic Algorithm and a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm applied to multiple bioinspired robots in a 2D environment simulation. The planning objectives are related to the harvesting of an apple plantation in which three swarm of butterflies were run, counting the fruits on the gro...

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LP-WAN) are receiving a lot of attention because of their ability to communicate using radio frequency in long distances, with low-power consumption and low-cost devices. In this paper, we provide a comparison between the two LP-WAN platforms that are leading the market, the Sigfox and the LoRaWAN, based on the literat...

In the study of effectiveness and efficiency of an athlete’s performance, intelligent systems can be applied on qualitative approaches and their performance metrics provide useful information on not just the quality of the data, but also reveal issues about the observational criteria and data collection context itself. 2000 executions of two simila...

This paper describes the implementation of a simulated bioinspired 3D model, which was moved through segmented gestures using fractional calculation segmentation methods. It was observed that for the increase in the detection of such gestures from this segmentation an improvement in the recognition and standardization of gesture images using the FO...

Over the years robotics has made great progress. Nowadays, robots begin to be part of the life of any person, designated social robotic. Humanoid robots are fascinating and have several advantages, such as they can work in places where there is a risk of contamination, risk of health, danger of life, places that are difficult to access. They also a...

This study presents a technique that uses an interactive virtual environment for the rehabilitation treatment of patients with mechanical strabismus and/or amblyopia who have lost eye movement. The relevant part of this treatment is the act of forcing the two eyes to cooperate with each other by increasing the level of adaptation of the brain and a...

Kinematic analysis of human movement is very important in several areas, such as in sports (e.g., for athletic performance analysis), health (e.g., rehabilitation of people with motor disabilities) and others. The study of the kinematics of the human body involves several methods that resort to the analysis of several parameters that come from the...