Abstract
Current engineering education challenges require approaches that promote scientific, technical, design and complementary skills while fostering autonomy, innovation and responsibility. The European Project Semester (EPS) at Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme (30 European Credit Transfer Units (ECTU)) for engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities that intends to address these goals. The students, organised in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real multidisciplinary problems during one semester. The EPS package, although on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). Hence, the students enrolled in this programme improve their transversal skills and learn, together and with the team of supervisors, subjects distinct from their core training. This paper presents the structure, implementation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering practices and promote internationalisation and engineering education innovation at ISEP.

Abstract
This paper presents the development process of a sustainable solution to grow aromatic plants in small houses. The solution is called The GreenHouse and is meant for people who live in small houses or city apartments and want fresh home grown aromatic plants, but have neither the time nor the space to grow them. The solution is intended to be sustainable and appropriate for people concerned with eating healthy, fresh food. The project was developed by a team of five students enrolled in the European Project Semester (EPS) at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) during the spring of 2017. EPS@ISEP is a project-based learning framework which aims to foster personal, teamwork and multidisciplinary problem-solving skills in engineering, business and product design students. Research and discussions within the team were done to develop the product. The existing solutions for growing fresh food in industrial and domestic applications as well as marketing, sustainability and ethical topics were researched and discussed. This way it was possible to define the requirements of The GreenHouse. The GreenHouse is semi-automatic and requires little interaction from the customer. It has two covers, a winter cover and a summer cover, to be changed depending on the season and weather. Solar energy and rainwater are used to enable the growth of aromatic plants, making this a sustainable system. The support is adaptable and made to fit different support sizes so it can be hanged on balconies or windows. © 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.

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Abstract
This paper describes the development of an application that allows an ABB robot arm to automatically perform the portrait of people. The Portraiture Robot performs the picture of a human face on paper. The developed system consists of 4 steps: (i) image acquisition through a webcam, (ii) image processing to retrieve the contours and features of the person's face, (iii) vectorization of the coordinates in the image plane, and (iv) conversion of the coordinates to the RAPID programming language. To get only the person's face, is performed a background subtraction and to obtain only the necessary information from the image are used filtering techniques to remove the features and contours of the person's face. To convert these points into x, y coordinates, the contours are vectorised and sent to a file, saved according to a defined protocol, and allowing to create a program for the robot. The developed application allows processing of all blocks listed above in real-time and in a robust manner, having the ability to adapt to any environment and allowing continued use. The work was validated through the participation in the 2014 Portuguese Robotics Open, and in an ISEP exhibition that occurred in Maia, always with good results.

Abstract
The use of robotic palletizing systems has been increasing in the so-called Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. However, because of the type of solutions developed, focused on high performance and efficiency, the degree of adaptability of packaging solutions from one type of product to another is extremely low. This is a relevant problem, since companies are changing their production processes from low variety/high volume to high variety/low volume. This environment requires companies to perform the setup of their robots more frequently, which has been leading to the need to use offline programming tools that decrease the required robot stop time. This work addresses these problems and, in this paper, is described the solution proposed for the automated offline development of collision free robot programs for palletizing applications. © Springer International Publishing AG 2018.

Abstract
The BSc in Systems Engineering, taught at the School of Engineering of the Porto Polytechnic (ISEP–PPorto), includes the development of team projects at the end of each semester. These projects are intended to be multidisciplinary, to allow students getting a systems perspective of the problems, and as a way to integrate knowledge from different scientific areas. To integrate the knowledge in electronics, microcontrollers and programming, common in several distinct systems nowadays, there is a course named Systems Labs I (LSIS1). This paper discusses the experience of teaching this course using a robotics based approach. The analysis is based on a survey conducted to the students enrolled in the course in the last three academic years, allowing to conclude that the overall students experience with the attendance of LSIS1 course is good. © 2018 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.