2024
Authors
Silva, A; Simoes, AC; Blanc, R;
Publication
TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Abstract
Collaborative robots (cobots) are emerging in manufacturing as a response to the current mass customization production paradigm and the fifth industrial revolution. Before adopting this technology in production processes and benefiting from its advantages, manufacturers need to analyze the investment. Therefore, this study aims to develop a decision -making framework for cobot adoption, incorporating a comprehensive set of quantitative and qualitative criteria, to be used by decision -makers in manufacturing companies. To achieve that objective, a qualitative study was conducted by collecting data through interviews with key actors in the cobot (or advanced manufacturing technologies) adoption decision process in manufacturing companies. The main findings of this study include, firstly, an extensive list of decision criteria, as well as some indicators to be used by decisionmakers, some of which are new to the literature. Secondly, a decision -making framework for cobot adoption is proposed, as well as a set of guidelines to use it. The framework is based on a weighted scoring method and can be customizable by the manufacturing company depending on its specific context, needs, and resources. The main contribution of this study consists in assisting decision -makers of manufacturing companies in performing more complete and sustained decision analyses regarding cobots adoption.
2024
Authors
Albuquerque, C; Correia, FF;
Publication
Proceedings of the 29th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs, People, and Practices, EuroPLoP 2024, Irsee, Germany, July 3-7, 2024
Abstract
Logging has long been a pillar for monitoring and troubleshooting software systems. From server and infrastructure to application-specific data, logs are an easy and quick way to collect information that may prove useful in diagnosing future issues. When systems become distributed, as is common on the cloud, logs are harder to collect and process. This paper presents three design patterns for logging in cloud-native applications. Standard Logging advises using a standard format for logs across all services and teams so they are easier to process by humans and machines. Audit Logging suggests that important user actions and system changes are recorded in a data store to ensure regulatory compliance or help investigate user-reported issues. Lastly, Log Sampling is about prioritizing logs to maintain a manageable amount of storage. These patterns were mined from existing literature on logging and cloud best practices to make them simpler to communicate, more detailed, and easier for all practitioners to understand.
2024
Authors
Almeida, J; Kubicek, J; Penhaker, M; Cerny, M; Augustynek, M; Varysova, A; Bansal, A; Timkovic, J;
Publication
RESULTS IN ENGINEERING
Abstract
Background: ROP Plus Form is an eye disease that can lead to blindness, and diagnosing it requires medical experts to manually examine the retinal condition. This task is challenging due to its subjective nature and poor image quality. Therefore, developing automatic tools for Retinal Blood Vessel Segmentation in fundus images could assist healthcare experts in diagnosing, monitoring, and prognosing the disease. Objective: This study focuses on developing a novel pipeline for automatically segmenting retinal blood vessels. The main requirements are that it can correctly identify the blood vessels in fundus images and perform well on different systems used for newborn evaluation. Methods: The pipeline uses different methods, including CIELAB Enhancement, Background Normalization, BellShaped Gaussian Matched Filtering, Modified Top-Hat operation, and a combination of vesselness filtering composed of Frangi and Jerman Filters. The segmentation is done by determining a threshold using the Triangle Threshold algorithm. A novel filter is also proposed to remove the Optical Disc artifacts from the primary segmentation based on the Circular Hough Transform. The segmentation pipeline is combined with different pretrained Convolution Neural Network architectures to evaluate its automatic classification capabilities. Results: The pipeline was tested with newborn fundus images acquired with Clarity RetCam3 and Phoenix ICON systems. The results were compared against annotations from three ophthalmologic experts. Clarity RetCam3 images achieved an accuracy of 0.94, specificity of 0.95, and sensitivity of 0.81, while Phoenix ICON images achieved an accuracy of 0.94, specificity of 0.97, and sensitivity of 0.83. The pipeline was also tested for the DRIVE Database, achieving an accuracy of 0.95, specificity of 0.97, and sensitivity of 0.82. For the classification task, the best results were achieved with the DenseNet121 architecture with an accuracy of 0.946. Conclusion: The segmentation scores were auspicious and confirmed the clinical relevance of the proposed pipeline. It has also proven to have a good generalization performance, essential for easier clinic integration. Finally, preliminary results on using CNNs showed how our work can be used to develop fully automatic tools for diagnosing ROP Plus form disease.
2024
Authors
Moreno, T; Sobral, T; Almeida, A; Soares, AL; Azevedo, A;
Publication
FLEXIBLE AUTOMATION AND INTELLIGENT MANUFACTURING: ESTABLISHING BRIDGES FOR MORE SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS, FAIM 2023, VOL 2
Abstract
Manufacturing industry is experiencing another revolution towards the digitalization of industrial processes. Different value chain actors must share specific and sensitive data according to business and data requirements. Digital architectures must ensure seamless and comprehensive communications between actors according to agreed-upon vocabularies. The digital representation of machines and other types of equipment, including crucial information about their static and dynamic operational data, is made possible by the ontological modelling of Asset Administration Shells (AAS), which is proposed in this paper as modular and semantically interoperable resources. These Cognitive Digital Twins are herein defined with de facto domain ontologies that model the semantics of the current operation, status and configurations of assets. This paper reports a proof-of-concept technical implementation that demonstrates an innovative digital architecture that connects and communicates active and modular Digital Twin of a machine in a bi-directional, connecting this asset to a digital manufacturing service provider.
2024
Authors
Pereira, MR; Verrelst, J; Tosin, R; Caicedo, JPR; Tavares, F; dos Santos, FN; Cunha, M;
Publication
AGRONOMY-BASEL
Abstract
Early and accurate disease diagnosis is pivotal for effective phytosanitary management strategies in agriculture. Hyperspectral sensing has emerged as a promising tool for early disease detection, yet challenges remain in effectively harnessing its potential. This study compares parametric spectral Vegetation Indices (VIs) and a nonparametric Gaussian Process Classification based on an Automated Spectral Band Analysis Tool (GPC-BAT) for diagnosing plant bacterial diseases using hyperspectral data. The study conducted experiments on tomato plants in controlled conditions and kiwi plants in field settings to assess the performance of VIs and GPC-BAT. In the tomato experiment, the modeling processes were applied to classify the spectral data measured on the healthy class of plants (sprayed with water only) and discriminate them from the data captured on plants inoculated with the two bacterial suspensions (108 CFU mL-1). In the kiwi experiment, the standard modeling results of the spectral data collected on nonsymptomatic plants were compared to the ones obtained using symptomatic plants' spectral data. VIs, known for their simplicity in extracting biophysical information, successfully distinguished healthy and diseased tissues in both plant species. The overall accuracy achieved was 63% and 71% for tomato and kiwi, respectively. Limitations were observed, particularly in differentiating specific disease infections accurately. On the other hand, GPC-BAT, after feature reduction, showcased enhanced accuracy in identifying healthy and diseased tissues. The overall accuracy ranged from 70% to 75% in the tomato and kiwi case studies. Despite its effectiveness, the model faced challenges in accurately predicting certain disease infections, especially in the early stages. Comparative analysis revealed commonalities and differences in the spectral bands identified by both approaches, with overlaps in critical regions across plant species. Notably, these spectral regions corresponded to the absorption regions of various photosynthetic pigments and structural components affected by bacterial infections in plant leaves. The study underscores the potential of hyperspectral sensing in disease diagnosis and highlights the strengths and limitations of VIs and GPC-BAT. The identified spectral features hold biological significance, suggesting correlations between bacterial infections and alterations in plant pigments and structural components. Future research avenues could focus on refining these approaches for improved accuracy in diagnosing diverse plant-pathogen interactions, thereby aiding disease diagnosis. Specifically, efforts could be directed towards adapting these methodologies for early detection, even before symptom manifestation, to better manage agricultural diseases.
2024
Authors
Almeida, PS; Shapiro, E;
Publication
CoRR
Abstract
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