Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) technologies have been evolving in recent decades, allowing simulating real-life situations in controlled and safe virtual environments, where they reveal increasingly realistic details. There is an increase in the number of publications on virtual reality interventions in different areas, especially in Education, particularly in interventions with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The lack of social skills prevents these children diagnosed with ASD to respond appropriately and adapt to the most diverse daily social situations. On this basis, VR has revealed a set of evidences that present promising results and show great acceptance among the diversified population with ASD. In order to understand how VR may contribute to the improvement of skills, allowing their inclusion, we conducted a systematic review of the literature. We present considerations on the selected studies, identifying the main gaps and pointing out possible directions for future research. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
Learning environments unquestionably enable learners to develop their pedagogical and scientific processes efficiently and effectively. Thus, considering the impossibility of not having conditions of autonomy over the routine underlying the studies and, consequently, not having guarantees of the learning carried out makes the learners experience gaps in the domain of materials adequate to their actual needs. The paper’s objective is to present the relevance of the applicability of Artificial Intelligence in Recommendation Systems, reinforced through the Assurance of Learning, oriented towards adaptive-personalized practice in corporate e-learning contexts. The research methodology underlying the work fell on Design Science Research, as it is considered adequate to support the research, given the need to carry out the design phases, development, construction, evaluation, validation of the artefact and, finally, communication of the results. The main results instigate the development of an Adaptive-Personalized Learning framework for corporate e-learning, provided with models of Artificial Intelligence and guided using the Assurance of Learning process. It becomes central that learners can enjoy adequate academic development. In this sense, the framework has an implicit structure that promotes the definition of personalized attributes, which involves recommendations and customizations of content per profile, including training content that will be suggested and learning activity content that will be continuously monitored, given the specific needs of learners. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Abstract
To tackle wildfires and improve forest biomass management, cost effective and reliable mowing and pruning robots are required. However, the development of visual perception systems for forestry robotics needs to be researched and explored to achieve safe solutions. This paper presents two main contributions: an annotated dataset and a benchmark between edge-computing hardware and deep learning models. The dataset is composed by nearly 5,400 annotated images. This dataset enabled to train nine object detectors: four SSD MobileNets, one EfficientDet, three YOLO-based detectors and YOLOR. These detectors were deployed and tested on three edge-computing hardware (TPU, CPU and GPU), and evaluated in terms of detection precision and inference time. The results showed that YOLOR was the best trunk detector achieving nearly 90% F1 score and an inference average time of 13.7ms on GPU. This work will favour the development of advanced vision perception systems for robotics in forestry operations.

Abstract
Bin picking is a challenging task involving many research domains within the perception and grasping fields, for which there are no perfect and reliable solutions available that are applicable to a wide range of unstructured and cluttered environments present in industrial factories and logistics centers. This paper contributes with research on the topic of object segmentation in cluttered scenarios, independent of previous object shape knowledge, for textured and textureless objects. In addition, it addresses the demand for extended datasets in deep learning tasks with realistic data. We propose a solution using a Mask R-CNN for 2D object segmentation, trained with real data acquired from a RGB-D sensor and synthetic data generated in Blender, combined with 3D point-cloud segmentation to extract a segmented point cloud belonging to a single object from the bin. Next, it is employed a re-configurable pipeline for 6-DoF object pose estimation, followed by a grasp planner to select a feasible grasp pose. The experimental results show that the object segmentation approach is efficient and accurate in cluttered scenarios with several occlusions. The neural network model was trained with both real and simulated data, enhancing the success rate from the previous classical segmentation, displaying an overall grasping success rate of 87.5%.

Abstract
Artificial intelligence is emerging in the field of veterinary medical imaging. The development of this area in medicine has introduced new concepts and scientific terminologies that professionals must be able to have some understanding of, such as the following: machine learning, deep learning, convolutional neural networks, and transfer learning. This paper offers veterinary professionals an overview of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning focused on imaging diagnosis. A review is provided of the existing literature on artificial intelligence in veterinary imaging of small animals, together with a brief conclusion.Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been increasingly used in the medical imaging field in the past few years. The evaluation of medical images is very subjective and complex, and therefore the application of artificial intelligence and deep learning methods to automatize the analysis process would be very beneficial. A lot of researchers have been applying these methods to image analysis diagnosis, developing software capable of assisting veterinary doctors or radiologists in their daily practice. This article details the main methodologies used to develop software applications on machine learning and how veterinarians with an interest in this field can benefit from such methodologies. The main goal of this study is to offer veterinary professionals a simple guide to enable them to understand the basics of artificial intelligence and machine learning and the concepts such as deep learning, convolutional neural networks, transfer learning, and the performance evaluation method. The language is adapted for medical technicians, and the work already published in this field is reviewed for application in the imaging diagnosis of different animal body systems: musculoskeletal, thoracic, nervous, and abdominal.

Abstract
Simple Summary Canine hip dysplasia development results in femoral neck modeling and an increase in thickness. The main objective of this work was to describe a femoral neck thickness index to quantify femoral neck width and to study its association with the degree of canine hip dysplasia using the Federation Cynologique Internationale scoring scheme. A total of 53 dogs (106 hips) were randomly selected for this study. Two examiners performed femoral neck thickness index estimation to study intra- and inter-examiner reliability and agreement. Statistical analysis tests showed excellent agreement and reliability between the measurements of the two examiners and the examiners' sessions. All joints were scored in five categories by an experienced examiner according to the Federation Cynologique Internationale criteria, and the results from examiner 1 were compared between these categories. The comparison of mean femoral neck thickness index between hip dysplasia categories using the analysis of variance test showed significant differences between groups. These results show that femoral neck thickness index is a parameter capable of evaluating proximal femur bone modeling and that it has the potential to enrich conventional canine hip dysplasia scoring criteria if incorporated into a computer-aided diagnosis software. The alteration in the shape of the femoral neck is an important radiographic sign for scoring canine hip dysplasia (CHD). Previous studies have reported that the femoral neck thickness (FNT) is greater in dogs with hip joint dysplasia, becoming progressively thicker with disease severity. The main objective of this work was to describe a femoral neck thickness index (FNTi) to quantify FNT and to study its association with the degree of CHD using the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI) scheme. A total of 53 dogs (106 hips) were randomly selected for this study. Two examiners performed FNTi estimation to study intra- and inter-examiner reliability and agreement. The paired t-test, the Bland-Altman plots, and the intraclass correlation coefficient showed excellent agreement and reliability between the measurements of the two examiners and the examiners' sessions. All joints were scored in five categories by an experienced examiner according to FCI criteria. The results from examiner 1 were compared between FCI categories. Hips that were assigned an FCI grade of A (n = 19), B (n = 23), C (n = 24), D (n = 24), and E (n = 16) had a mean & PLUSMN; standard deviation FNTi of 0.809 & PLUSMN; 0.024, 0.835 & PLUSMN; 0.044, 0.868 & PLUSMN; 0.022, 0.903 & PLUSMN; 0.033, and 0.923 & PLUSMN; 0.068, respectively (ANOVA, p < 0.05). Therefore, these results show that FNTi is a parameter capable of evaluating proximal femur bone modeling and that it has the potential to enrich conventional CHD scoring criteria if incorporated into a computer-aided diagnosis capable of detecting CHD.