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Publications

2026

Enhancing multi-agent deep reinforcement learning for flexible job-shop scheduling through constraint programming

Authors
Alexandre Jesus; Arthur Corrêa; Miguel Vieira; Catarina Marques; Cristóvão Silva; Samuel Moniz;

Publication
Computers & Operations Research

Abstract

2026

Applied Dynamic System Theory for Coordination Assessment of Whole-Body Center of Mass During Different Countermovements

Authors
Rodrigues, C; Correia, MV; Abrantes, JMCS; Rodrigues, MAB; Nadal, J;

Publication
SENSORS

Abstract
This study applies phase plane analysis of medio-lateral, anteroposterior, and vertical directions for the coordination assessment of whole-body (WB) center of mass (COM) movement during the impulse phase of a standard maximum vertical jump (MVJ) with long, short, and no countermovement (CM). A video system and force platform were used, with the amplitudes of WB COM excursion obtained from image-based motion capture at each anatomical direction, and the 2D and 3D mean radial distance were compared under long, short, and no CM conditions. The estimate of the population mean length was used as a measure of distribution concentration, and the Rayleigh statistical test for circular data was applied with the sample distribution critical value. Watson's U2 goodness-of-fit test for the von Mises distribution was used with the mean direction and concentration factor. The applied metrics led to the detection of shared and specific features in the global and phase plane analysis of WB COM movement coordination in the medio-lateral, anteroposterior, and vertical directions during long, short, and no CM conditions in relation to MVJ performance assessed from ground reaction force (GRF) through the force platform. Thus, long, short, and no CM impulses share lower amplitudes of WB COM excursion in the medio-lateral direction and mean radial distance to its mean, whereas the anteroposterior and vertical excursion of WB COM, along with the 2D transversal and 3D spatial length of the WB COM path, present as potential predictors of MVJ performance, with distinct behavior in long CM compared to short and no CM. Additionally, the applied workflow on generalized phase plane analysis led to the detection, through complementary metrics, of the anatomical WB COM movement directions with higher coordination based on phase concentration tests at 5% significance, in line with MVJ performance under different CM conditions.

2026

On Quantitative Solution Iteration in QAlloy

Authors
Silva, P; Macedo, N; Oliveira, JN;

Publication
RIGOROUS STATE-BASED METHODS, ABZ 2025

Abstract
A key feature of model finding techniques allows users to enumerate and explore alternative solutions. However, it is challenging to guarantee that the generated instances are relevant to the user, representing effectively different scenarios. This challenge is exacerbated in quantitative modelling, where one must consider both the qualitative, structural part of a model, and the quantitative data on top of it. This results in a search space of possibly infinite candidate solutions, often infinitesimally similar to one another. Thus, research on instance enumeration in qualitative model finding is not directly applicable to the quantitative context, which requires more sophisticated methods to navigate the solution space effectively. The main goal of this paper is to explore a generic approach for navigating quantitative solution spaces and showcase different iteration operations, aiming to generate instances that differ considerably from those previously seen and promote a larger coverage of the search space. Such operations are implemented in QAlloy - a quantitative extension to Alloy - on top of Max-SMT solvers, and are evaluated against several examples ranging, in particular, over the integer and fuzzy domains.

2026

Deciphering the Silent Signals: Unveiling Frequency Importance for Wi-Fi-Based Human Pose Estimation with Explainability

Authors
Capozzi, L; Ferreira, L; Gonçalves, T; Rebelo, A; Cardoso, JS; Sequeira, AF;

Publication
PATTERN RECOGNITION AND IMAGE ANALYSIS, IBPRIA 2025, PT II

Abstract
The rapid advancement of wireless technologies, particularly Wi-Fi, has spurred significant research into indoor human activity detection across various domains (e.g., healthcare, security, and industry). This work explores the non-invasive and cost-effective Wi-Fi paradigm and the application of deep learning for human activity recognition using Wi-Fi signals. Focusing on the challenges in machine interpretability, motivated by the increase in data availability and computational power, this paper uses explainable artificial intelligence to understand the inner workings of transformer-based deep neural networks designed to estimate human pose (i.e., human skeleton key points) from Wi-Fi channel state information. Using different strategies to assess the most relevant sub-carriers (i.e., rollout attention and masking attention) for the model predictions, we evaluate the performance of the model when it uses a given number of sub-carriers as input, selected randomly or by ascending (high-attention) or descending (low-attention) order. We concluded that the models trained with fewer (but relevant) sub-carriers are competitive with the baseline (trained with all sub-carriers) but better in terms of computational efficiency (i.e., processing more data per second).

2026

Unveiling Group-Specific Distributed Concept Drift: A Fairness Imperative in Federated Learning

Authors
Salazar, T; Gama, J; Araújo, H; Abreu, PH;

Publication
IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Learn. Syst.

Abstract

2026

UAbALL: Automata Learning Lab

Authors
de Oliveira R.G.; Sousa A.M.; Pinto M.; Almendra e Viana N.; Morais A.J.;

Publication
Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Abstract
E-learning has been important in higher education, enabling people to continue their education with more flexibility. Virtual laboratories play a crucial role in Computer Science distance learning degrees, by enabling students to study at their rhythm and getting practical answers to practical problems immediately. Theoretical models such as finite automata, pushdown automata, context-free grammars, Turing machines, etc., are essential for understanding the grounds of languages and computability and are also the basis for the implementation of compilers. In this paper, a new virtual laboratory is presented, UAbALL—Automata Learning Lab, developed at Universidade Aberta (UAb), the Portuguese Open University. This virtual laboratory has already been tested in the curricular unit of Languages and Computation, with good feedback from the students. A comparison to other tools was performed showing that UAbALL is more complete in terms of tools provided.

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