Abstract
<p>An intelligible step-by-step Reinforcement Learning (RL) problem formulation and the availability of an easy-to-use demonstrative toolbox for students at various levels (e.g., undergraduate, bachelor, master, doctorate), researchers and educators. This tool facilitates the familiarization with the key concepts of RL, its problem formulation and implementation. The results demonstrated in this paper are produced by a Python program that is released open-source, along with other lecture materials to reduce the learning barriers in such innovative research topic in robotics.</p> <p>The RL paradigm is showing promising results as a generic purpose framework for solving decision-making problems (e.g., robotics, games, finance). In this work, RL is used for solving a robotics 2D navigational problem where the robot needs to avoid collisions with obstacles while aiming to reach a goal point. A navigational problem is simple and convenient for educational purposes, since the outcome is unambiguous (e.g., the goal is reached or not, a collision happened or not). Thus, the intent is to accelerate the adoption of RL techniques in the field of mobile robotics.</p> <p>Motivate and promote the adoption of RL techniques to solve decision-making problems, specifically in robotics. </p> <p>Due to a lack of accessible educational and demonstrative toolboxes concerning the field of RL, this work combines theoretical exposition with an accessible open-source graphical interactive toolbox to facilitate the apprehension.</p> <p>This study aims to reduce the learning barriers and inspire young students, researchers and educators to use RL as an obvious tool to solve robotics problems.</p>

Abstract
The Feedfirst Intelligent Monitoring System is a novel tool for intelligent monitoring of fish nurseries in aquaculture scenarios, mainly focusing on monitoring three essential items: water quality control, biomass estimation, and automated feeding. The system is based on machine vision techniques for fish larvae population size detection, and larvae biomass estimation is monitored through size measurement. We also show that the perception-actuation loop in automated fish tanks can be closed by using the vision system output to influence feeding procedures. The proposed solution was tested in a real tank in an aquaculture setting with real-time performance and logging capabilities.

Abstract
Explainable recommendations enable users to understand why certain items are suggested and, ultimately, nurture system transparency, trustworthiness, and confidence. Large crowdsourcing recommendation systems ought to crucially promote authenticity and transparency of recommendations. To address such challenge, this paper proposes the use of stream-based explainable recommendations via blockchain profiling. Our contribution relies on chained historical data to improve the quality and transparency of online collaborative recommendation filters - Memory-based and Model-based - using, as use cases, data streamed from two large tourism crowdsourcing platforms, namely Expedia and TripAdvisor. Building historical trust-based models of raters, our method is implemented as an external module and integrated with the collaborative filter through a post-recommendation component. The inter-user trust profiling history, traceability and authenticity are ensured by blockchain, since these profiles are stored as a smart contract in a private Ethereum network. Our empirical evaluation with HotelExpedia and Tripadvisor has consistently shown the positive impact of blockchain-based profiling on the quality (measured as recall) and transparency (determined via explanations) of recommendations.

Abstract
Each year millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans, lakes and rivers. In the spring of 2020, an European Project Semester team, composed of multicultural and multidisciplinary undergraduate students, decided to tackle this problem. This was achieved by designing, modelling and simulating a floating trash collector named Soaksy. The collector is expected to operate continuously and automatically on lakes at the view of everybody, becoming an educational and an environmental tool. This paper reports the team's journey from the initial studies, through the design, till the final simulation and tests.

Abstract
This paper reports the research and design of a foldable disaster shelter for people left homeless due to natural disasters, by a multinational team composed of six students, from six different countries. The team was enrolled in the European Project Semester (EPS), a project-based capstone programme offered by Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), to students who have completed at least two years of undergraduate studies. The main objective of the project was to design, simulate and test an ethics and sustainability driven foldable shelter. This goal was pursued by conducting a series of studies to derive the solution requirements, involving a survey on shelter concepts and solutions, a review on worldwide natural disasters, as well as an analysis of the shelter market. The latter led to the definition of a business plan, a marketing strategy, a logo and a brand name. The solution comes with a Web application to help rescue organisations to follow the scheduled maintenance plan and keep track of the deployed units.

Abstract
This paper reports the development of WalkSafe, a Smart Pedestrian Crossing solution, by a multinational and multidisciplinary team of students during the spring semester of 2020. The team was enrolled in the European Project Semester (EPS), a project-based capstone programme offered by Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP). Motivated by the idea to reduce the number of pedestrians hit by cars at road crossings, and associated injuries and deaths, the team surveyed pedestrian behaviour to conclude that people often ignore pedestrian crossings. Thus, this project intended to motivate people to use pedestrian crossings, increasing the safety of both pedestrians and drivers. The proposed solution can be implemented on any pedestrian crossing and involves up to three components: (i) a box to be fixed on each side of pedestrian crossings with a radio-frequency identification reader as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi interfaces; (ii) a smartphone mobile app; and (iii) a personal bracelet for children and elderly, with a passive radio-frequency identification tag.