Abstract
Massification of higher education institution promotes the importance of peer education and team work as important educational tools. As such, teams frequently produce several deliverables that should be organized and evaluated throughout a given course. Some submissions should then be attributed to the team rather than the individual and searching for a given type of deliverable from a given team becomes an important concern in terms of organization and ease of usage in evaluating assignments. The course "Projeto FEUP", used as case study and surely many others benefit from an at-least partially automated production of an organized set of all deliverables from a given course in a given year - a course portfolio, a task made easier by the usage of the presented ideas and the prototype implemented in the Moodle Learning Management System. This article shows details of the implementation and the lessons learned. The prototype was tested in the mentioned test course that has about one thousand students enrolled and a course portfolio was successfully created.

Abstract
The increase of the use of Autonomous Vehicles in different types of environments leads to an improvement of the Localization and Navigation algorithms. The goal is to increase the levels of efficiency, security and robustness of the system, minimizing the tasks completion time. The application of cleaning robots in domestic environments have several advantages however some improvements should be performed in order to develop a robust system. Also in large spaces one robot doesn't achieve the desired performance in terms of robustness to faults and efficiency in the cleaning process. Considering a fleet of autonomous robots, this process could be improved. The purpose of our paper is the presentation of an architecture for management a fleet of cleaning robots, considering a complete coverage path planning for large and structured environments. Compartments are found in a grid-like decomposition and an area coverage strategy are evolved (optimized) by using Genetic Algorithms. The Task allocation module is based on Auctions strategy, thus obtaining cooperation under dynamic constraints in complex environments. The case study optimizes the number of robots involved in the cooperative cleaning of a full building in the campus, based on its real architectural plans.

Abstract
The purpose of this work is to explore the design principles for a Real-Time Robotic Multi Camera Vision System, in a case study involving a real world competition of autonomous driving. Design practices from vision and real-time research areas are applied into a Real-Time Robotic Vision application, thus exemplifying good algorithm design practices, the advantages of employing the "zero copy one pass" methodology and associated trade-offs leading to the selection of a controller platform. The vision tasks under study are: (i) recognition of a "flat" signal; and (ii) track following, requiring 3D reconstruction. This research firstly improves the used algorithms for the mentioned tasks and finally selects the controller hardware. Optimization for the shown algorithms yielded from 1.5 times to 190 times improvements, always with acceptable quality for the target application, with algorithm optimization being more important on lower computing power platforms. Results also include a 3-cm and five-degree accuracy for lane tracking and 100% accuracy for signalling panel recognition, which are better than most results found in the literature for this application. Clear results comparing different PC platforms for the mentioned Robotic Vision tasks are also shown, demonstrating trade-offs between accuracy and computing power, leading to the proper choice of control platform. The presented design principles are portable to other applications, where Real-Time constraints exist.

Abstract
Planning the optimal assembly and disassembly sequence plays a critical role when optimizing the production, maintenance and recycling of products. For tackling this problem, a recursive branch-and-bound algorithm was developed for finding the optimal disassembly plan. It takes into consideration the traveling distance of a robotic end effector along with a cost penalty when it needs to be changed. The precedences and part decoupling directions are automatically computed in the proposed geometric reasoning engine by analyzing the spatial relationships present in SolidWorks assemblies. For accelerating the optimization process, a best-first search algorithm was implemented for quickly finding an initial disassembly sequence solution that is used as an upper bound for pruning most of the non-optimal tree branches. For speeding up the search further, a caching technique was developed for reusing feasible disassembly operations computed on previous search steps, reducing the computational time by more than 18%. As a final stage, our SolidWorks add-in generates an exploded view animation for allowing intuitive analysis of the best solution found. For testing our approach, the disassembly of two starter motors and a single cylinder engine was performed for assessing the capabilities and time requirements of our algorithms. © 2018 IEEE.

Abstract
Replanning is often used to optimize results of an activity in an ever changing world. To address the challenge of preparing future engineers for success, a special course was created for all engineering freshmen of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, in Portugal. Presented as a case study, this special course underwent a careful replanning as a result of several years of experience in teaching practice alongside with a theoretical deepening in pedagogical and technological issues, under the aegis of the action-research methodology. Within the context of the case study course, the mentioned replanning was also based on a theoretical approach that clearly identifies teaching-learning-assessment methodologies that promote regulation from those that foster emancipation, using a specific instrument: a taxonomy of educational processes. The replanning was designed to globally boost results regarding the educational aims of the course such as furthering freshmen's integration into work environment and preparing them for success by fostering transversal skills (needed for study and work). Technology is seen as a mean of education enrichment as well as a productivity tool. The introduced innovations include fun-but-educational activities, several types of assessment over time and specific technological tools which were critical for the educational impact/achievement of this course. Success is demonstrated by encouraging feedback from the stakeholders, high students' classifications and a steady reduction in retention. It is advocated that large portions of the reasoning behind the replanning can be extrapolated to other courses.

Abstract
The presented research explores four years of newcomer engineering students at FEUP, one of the largest faculties of engineering in Portugal. The students are surveyed in a mandatory course common to all engineering programs at the mentioned faculty, totalling an involvement of about four thousand. This research explores the perceptions of 1198 newcomer students regarding learning and satisfaction, workload, integration into academic work environment and institutional support whilst trying to find gender differences regarding the following variables: engineering program, academic year and change of residence. The questionnaire used in the presented research was validated and its internal consistency was excellent. The findings reveal that students' perceptions on learning and satisfaction as well as on institutional support (two out of four factors) are consistently similar between genders throughout the four years of the study. The differences found between male and female students on integration and workload, however consistent, are small if not marginal. The study is significant because it shows the relevance of the optimization efforts for integration (in the academic work environment) introduced in a mandatory course at the start of engineering degrees in order to bridge the gap between male and female students. This research shows that we are walking towards gender equality in engineering, but we feel that there is still some effort to be done, namely through inspiring scholars to analyse and act upon academic contexts and higher education governance without prejudice and with an open mind: a commitment that is as hard as necessary.