Emanuel Peres

University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro | utad · Departamento de Engenharias

The aim of this study is twofold: first, to present a survey of the actual and most advanced methods related to the use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) that emerged in the past few years due to the technological advancements that allowed the miniaturization of components, leading to the availability of small-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)...

Traditional imagery-provided, for example, by RGB and/or NIR sensors-has proven to be useful in many agroforestry applications. However, it lacks the spectral range and precision to profile materials and organisms that only hyperspectral sensors can provide. This kind of high-resolution spectroscopy was firstly used in satellites and later in manne...

To differentiate between canopy and vegetation cover is particularly challenging. Nonetheless, it is pivotal in obtaining the exact crops' vegetation when using remote-sensing data. In this article, a method to automatically estimate and extract vineyards' canopy is proposed. It combines vegetation indices and digital elevation models-derived from...

Aging of Tawny Port wine is a multifactorial process critical for attaining the desired quality. Real time monitoring of important intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are known to affect the time and quality of the aging process are important to optimize and to manage the natural variability between wines aged in different long-used wood barrels....

Wireless sensor networks have found multiple applications in precision viticulture. Despite the steady progress in sensing devices and wireless technologies, some of the crucial items needed to improve the usability and scalability of the networks, such as gateway infrastructures and in-field processing, have been comparatively neglected. This pape...

Climate change pose significant challenges to modern agriculture management systems, threatening food production and security. Therefore, tackling its effects has never been so imperative to attain sustainable food access and nutrition worldwide. In the case of viticulture, besides jeopardizing grape production, climate change has severe impact in...

Accurate detection and differentiation of grapevine canopies from other vegetation, along with individual grapevine row identification, pose significant challenges in precision viticulture (PV), especially within irregularly structured vineyards shaped by natural terrain slopes. This study employs aerial imagery captured by unmanned aerial vehicles...

Understanding geometric and biophysical characteristics is essential for determining grapevine vigor and improving input management and automation in viticulture. This study compares point cloud data obtained from a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) and various UAV sensors including multispectral, panchromatic, Thermal Infrared (TIR), RGB, and LiDAR...

The widespread adoption of digital technologies in educational systems has been globally reflecting a shift in pedagogic content delivery that seems to fit modern generations of students while tackling relevant challenges faced by the current scholar context, e.g., progress traceability, pedagogic content fair access and intuitive visual representa...

Water is essential for maintaining plant health and optimal growth in agriculture. While some crops depend on irrigation, others can rely on rainfed water, depending on regional climatic conditions. This is exemplified by grapevines, which have specific water level requirements, and irrigation systems are needed. However, these systems can be susce...

The proliferation of classification-capable artificial intelligence (AI) across a wide range of domains (e.g., agriculture, construction, etc.) has been allowed to optimize and complement several tasks, typically operationalized by humans. The computational training that allows providing such support is frequently hindered by various challenges rel...

Lung cancer is the 2nd most diagnosed cancer worldwide. The corresponding histopathological analysis, being both costly and time-consuming, demands the commitment of skilled professionals who, while engrossed in this task, experience constraints on their ability to attend to other crucial responsibilities. Moreover, as it is a human-driven process,...

Aircraft maintenance plays a vital role in ensuring not only public safety but also aircraft availability and financial viability. However, carrying out such activities traditionally leaves gaps for processual optimizations with the potential of increasing the overall performance and satisfaction of operators and engineers who deal with these respo...

Communication between Deaf and hearing individuals remains a persistent challenge requiring attention to foster inclusivity. Despite notable efforts in the development of digital solutions for sign language recognition (SLR), several issues persist, such as cross-platform interoperability and strategies for tokenizing signs to enable continuous con...

The bedbug and the grape moth are the most significant pests affecting rice and vineyards, causing great damage. However, these pests are only two examples of the many insect pests that exist with great potential to cause significant crop damage. Insect traps are among the most appropriate solution for monitoring and counting, influencing the selec...

Remote-sensing processes based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have opened up new possibilities to both map and extract individual plant parameters. This is mainly due to the high spatial data resolution and acquisition flexibility of UAVs. Among the possible plant-related metrics is the leaf area index (LAI), which has already been successfully...

A 3D real-time quality inspection platform that specifically focus on automotive cast iron parts was developed for the industry and is presented in this work. It is supported by a cloud-based platform, which combines recent software and hardware advances to deal with large amounts of information related to the acquisition process and the computatio...

The management of an online footwear retail store - also known as marketplace - usually involves activities that directly or indirectly end up to interface with customers, wherein communication efficiency and effectiveness is crucially relevant. Critical factors concerning entities developing remote business in these areas or similar include: (i) p...

Deep learning (DL) is becoming increasingly popular in numerous application fields within the current Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era. This is mainly due to its capability for providing accurate predictions and reliable consistency in decision-making. Bridge engineering focused on structure monitoring and inspection is a crucial activity for...

Communication consists of a set of linguistic signs and rules that establish a common base for understanding between two or more interlocutors. However, many are the conditions that can affect this process (cultural, idiomatic, environmental, etc.), being one of the most challenging associated to the interaction between deaf and hearing persons. In...

Citation: Sousa, J.J.; Toscano, P.; Matese, A.; Di Gennaro, S.F.; Berton, A.; Gatti, M.; Poni, S.; Pádua, L.; Hruška, J.; Morais, R.; et al. UAV-Based Hyperspectral Monitoring Using Push-Broom and Snapshot Sensors: A Multisite Assessment for Precision Viticulture Applications. Sensors 2022, 22, 6574.

Proximity sensing approaches with a wide array of sensors available for use in precision viticulture contexts can nowadays be considered both well-know and mature technologies. Still, several in-field practices performed throughout different crops rely on direct visual observation supported on gained experience to assess aspects of plants’ phenolog...

Vineyard classification is an important process within viticulture-related decision-support systems. Indeed, it improves grapevine vegetation detection, enabling both the assessment of vineyard vegetative properties and the optimization of in-field management tasks. Aerial data acquired by sensors coupled to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may be u...

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Geological disasters are responsible for the loss of human lives and for significant economic and financial damage every year. Considering that these disasters may occur anywhere—both in remote and/or in highly populated areas—and anytime, continuously monitoring areas known to be more prone to geohazards can help to determine preventive or alert a...

Business models built upon multimedia/multisensory setups delivering user experiences within disparate contexts-entertainment, tourism, cultural heritage, etc.-usually comprise the installation and in-situ management of both equipment and digital contents. Considering each setup as unique in its purpose, location, layout, equipment and digital cont...

The development and implementation of a virtual environment that aims to support farmers in managing their land and crops in a more sustainable way is presented in this paper. It allows both textual and 3D visualization of croprelated biophysical parameters, such as height, volume and length. Moreover, the latter can be dynamically altered accordin...

Spatial and temporal variability characterization in Precision Agriculture (PA) practices is often accomplished by proximity data gathering devices, which acquire data from a wide variety of sensors installed within the vicinity of crops. Proximity data acquisition usually depends on a hardware solution to which some sensors can be coupled, managed...

Tawny Port wine is produced in the Douro Demarcated Region by blending several fortified wines in different aging stages During the aging process in small wood barrels, the red wine color progressively develops into tawny, medium tawny, or light tawny In this Port wine style, there are some special categories like Tawny Reserve, Tawny with Indicati...

Tawny Port wine is produced in the Douro Demarcated Region by blending several fortified wines in different aging stages During the aging process in small wood barrels, the red wine color progressively develops into tawny, medium tawny, or light tawny In this Port wine style, there are some special categories like Tawny Reserve, Tawny with Indicati...

Currently, the use of free and open-source software is increasing. The flexibility, availability, and maturity of this software could be a key driver to develop useful and interesting solutions. In general, open-source solutions solve specific tasks that can replace commercial solutions, which are often very expensive. This is even more noticeable...

Phytosanitary conditions can hamper the normal development of trees and significantly impact their yield. The phytosanitary condition of chestnut stands is usually evaluated by sampling trees followed by a statistical extrapolation process, making it a challenging task, as it is labor-intensive and requires skill. In this study, a novel methodology...

Traditionally farmers have used their perceptual sensorial systems to diagnose and monitor their crops health and needs. However, humans possess five basic perceptual systems with accuracy levels that can change from human to human which are largely dependent on the stress, experience, health and age. To overcome this problem, in the last decade, w...

This paper presents a model of a system capable of addressing the training needs identified for small universities, using the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) as a case study. In addition to supporting the typical needs of distance learning/education (e.g., e-learning), it is also intended that the proposed system complements the tr...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become popular in recent years and are now used in a wide variety of applications. This is the logical result of certain technological developments that occurred over the last two decades, allowing UAVs to be equipped with different types of sensors that can provide high-resolution data at relatively low prices....

Currently, climate change poses a global threat, which may compromise the sustainability of agriculture, forestry and other land surface systems. In a changing world scenario, the economic importance of Remote Sensing (RS) to monitor forests and agricultural resources is imperative to the development of agroforestry systems. Traditional RS technolo...

The reconstitution of road traffic accidents scenes is a contemporary and important issue, addressed both by private and public entities in different countries around the world. However, the task of collecting data on site is not generally focused on with the same orientation and relevance. Addressing this type of accident scenario requires a balan...

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for remote sensing applications in precision viticulture significantly increased in the last years. UAVs' capability to acquire high spatiotemporal resolution and georeferenced imagery from different sensors make them a powerful tool for a better understanding of vineyard spatial and multitemporal heteroge...

Tawny Port wine is a category of the famous Portuguese fortified wine commercialized worldwide and produced in the Douro Demarcated Region. Tawny Port wine oxidative aging is a multifactorial process critical for reaching the wanted quality. Real time monitoring of important intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are known to affect both time and qua...

MixAR, a full-stack system capable of providing visualization of virtual reconstructions seamlessly integrated in the real scene (e.g. upon ruins), with the possibility of being freely explored by visitors, in situ, is presented in this article. In addition to its ability to operate with several tracking approaches to be able to deal with a wide va...

Climate change is projected to be a key influence on crop yields across the globe. Regarding viticulture, primary climate vectors with a significant impact include temperature, moisture stress, and radiation. Within this context, it is of foremost importance to monitor soils' moisture levels, as well as to detect pests, diseases, and possible probl...

Viticulture has a major impact in the European economy and over the years the intensive grapevine production led to the proliferation of many varieties. Traditionally these varieties are manually catalogued in the field, which is a costly and slow process and being, in many cases, very challenging to classify even for an experienced ampelographer....

This paper explores the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to acquire remotely sensed very high-resolution imagery for classification of an agrosilvopastoral system in a rural region of Portugal. Aerial data was obtained using a low-cost UAV, equipped with an RGB sensor. Acquired imagery undergone a photogrammetric processing pipeline to obta...

Authenticity, traceability and certification are key to assure both quality and confidence to wine consumers and an added commercial value to farmers and winemakers. Grapevine variety stands out as one of the most relevant factors to be considered in wine identification within the whole wine sector value chain. Ampelography is the science responsib...

In recent years unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used in several applications and research studies related to environmental monitoring. The works performed have demonstrated the suitability of UAVs to be employed in different scenarios, taking advantage of its capacity to acquire high-resolution data from different sensing payloads, in a t...

Vine culture is influenced by many factors, such as the weather, soil or topography, which are triggers to phytosanitary issues. Among them are some diseases, that are responsible for major economic losses that can, however, be managed with timely interventions in the field, viable of leading to effective results by preventing damage propagation. W...

In the early 1980′s, the European chestnut tree (Castanea sativa, Mill.) assumed an important role in the Portuguese economy. Currently, the Trás-os-Montes region (Northeast of Portugal) concentrates the highest chestnuts production in Portugal, representing the major source of income in the region (€50M-€60M). The recognition of the quality of the...

Today’s climatic proneness to extreme conditions together with human activity have been triggering a series of wildfire-related events that put at risk ecosystems, as well as animal and vegetal patrimony, while threatening dwellers nearby rural or urban areas. When intervention teams - firefighters, civil protection, police - acknowledge these even...

Over the last few years, an extensive set of technologies have been systematically included in precision agriculture (PA) and also in precision viticulture (PV) practices, as tools that allow efficient monitoring of nearly any parameter to achieve sustainable crop management practices and to increase both crop yield and quality. However, many techn...

Virtual models' production is of high pertinence in research and business fields such as architecture, archaeology, or video games, whose requirements might range between expeditious virtual building generation for extensively populating computer-based synthesized environments and hypothesis testing through digital reconstructions. There are some k...

Unmanned aerial vehicles have become a popular remote sensing platform for agricultural applications, with an emphasis on crop monitoring. Although there are several methods to detect vegetation through aerial imagery, these remain dependent of manual extraction of vegetation parameters. This article presents an automatic method that allows for ind...

Seaweed assemblages are present in rocky shores around the world, creating very productive ecosystems with high ecological and economic importance. These assemblages include a variety of structuring species that provide habitat, food and shelter for organisms from different trophic levels such as invertebrates, fish, and top predators, supporting c...

This study aimed to characterize vineyard vegetation thorough multi-temporal monitoring using a commercial low-cost rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a consumer-grade red/green/blue (RGB) sensor. Ground-truth data and UAV-based imagery were acquired on nine distinct dates, covering the most significant vegetative growing cycle...

Machine Learning (ML) progressed significantly in the last decade, evolving the computer-based learning/prediction paradigm to a much more effective class of models known as Deep learning (DL). Since then, hyperspectral data processing relying on DL approaches is getting more popular, competing with the traditional classification techniques. In thi...

To detect inconsistencies in any type of data first it is necessary to define what is considered to be anomalous. Usually, elements with characteristics opposed to those reputed as normal of local and/or global neighbourhood elements in the dataset are deemed anomalies. Some spots in grapevines leaves can signal the existence of biotic or abiotic p...

Palavras-chave: Veículos aéreos não tripulados, processamento fotogramétrico, vitis vinifera, processamento digital de imagem, modelos digitais de elevação, índices de vegetação. Resumo: A qualidade e o desenvolvimento da videira estão relacionados com a heterogeneidade espacial, que depende de vários fatores, associados diretamente à vinha, com im...

Palavras-chave: IoT para a Agricultura, Sensoriamento de Terreno, Deteção Remota, Agricultura de Precisão, Suporte à Decisão, Aprendizagem Computacional, Fitossanidade, Previsão de Doenças e Pragas Resumo: O mySense é uma inovadora plataforma de integração de dados especificamente criada e em contínuo desenvolvimento para oferecer soluções para os...

Anomaly detection is a process of finding an element or a group of elements with anomalous behavior, which can be viewed from a different perspective (e.g. spatial, spectral or temporal aspects). In hyperspectral data, images' spectral information is robust and can bring additional information when compared to common RGB images. Each material has i...

This paper proposes the use of hyperspectral data, acquired by a sensor mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for early anomaly detection in vineyards. Hyperspectral data has become more accessible in the latter years, and therefore a high number of potential applications had emerged. However, to detect any slight change in vine plant´s healt...

Palavras-chave: imagem térmica, stress hídrico, agricultura, veículos aéreos não tripulados, processamento fotogramétrico Resumo: O crescente aumento populacional causou a necessidade de estender áreas de produção agrícola, o que, consequentemente, leva ao aumento do uso de recursos hídricos. Esse facto, aliado ao aumento da temperatura global e a...

While the popularity of virtual reality (VR) grows in a wide range of application contexts – e.g. entertainment, training, cultural heritage and medicine –, its economic impact is expected to reach around 15bn USD, by the year of 2020. Within VR field, 360º video has been sparking the interest of development and research communities. However, editi...