2026
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
Authors
Pereira, R; Malheiro, B; Silva, MF;
Publication
Robotics
Abstract
2026
Authors
Fawzy Mohamed, EM; Ribeiro, J; Sousa, A; Santos, F;
Publication
ICARSC
Abstract
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is a promising solution for mobile-robot navigation, yet its performance often degrades in harsh terrain where wheel-ground interactions vary rapidly. Uneven and deformable surfaces can change the effective wheel radius and introduce persistent left-right actuation asymmetries, which distort odometry and action execution and ultimately reduce goal-reaching success. We propose a two-stage, predictor-augmented DRL framework that improves robustness to these non-idealities without relying on external supervision or privileged sensors. In Stage 1, the robot collects randomized trajectories in an ideally flat environment while sampling episode-wise left/right wheel-radius factors, and trains a lightweight self-supervised predictor from onboard signals (odometry, IMU, and wheel joint states) to estimate the mismatch factors. In Stage 2, the trained predictor is frozen and its outputs are appended to the observation of a Soft Actor Critic (SAC) navigation policy, enabling the policy to condition its decisions on estimated actuation drift during navigation in harsh terrain. We evaluate the proposed approach in ROS 2/Gazebo across multiple harsh-terrain scenarios with wheel-radius perturbations. Our method outperforms all baselines in success, slip-related metrics, and cumulative roll-pitch inclination, while producing modestly longer paths as a deliberate trade-off to mitigate wheel-radius mismatch. We further validate sim-to-real transfer on a real robot under unmodeled effects (sensor noise, calibration drift, and actuator saturation). The full source code and a demonstration video of both simulation and real-world experiments are publicly available on GitHub. © 2026 IEEE.
2026
Authors
de Oliveira, RG; Sousa, AM; Pinto, M; Viana, NAE; Morais, AJ;
Publication
PROCEEDINGS OF 19TH IBERIAN CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES, CISTI 2024, VOL 1
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.
2026
Authors
Herrero Rozas, LA; Campos, FA; Villar, J;
Publication
Abstract
2026
Authors
Almeida, F; Leão, G; Costa, CM; Rocha, CD; Sousa, A; da Silva, LG; Rocha, LF; Veiga, G;
Publication
ICARSC
Abstract
Robust robotic manipulation is an essential task for the progress of automation, yet clothing handling remains a major challenge for robots. Despite currently going through rapid technological advancement, the textile industry still faces many obstacles regarding textile manipulation, which often requires a lot of testing and resources to build robust systems. Simulation is often explored as an alternative to real-life testing, but the unpredictability of this type of material makes the development of reliable simulated environments with fabrics very difficult. This paper presents an advancement made in textile models in the MuJoCo simulator by extending an existing macro for realistic rectangular cloth generation to support garments of arbitrary shapes. Both a T-shirt and a square cloth were placed in real manipulation scenarios, and the setup was replicated afterwards in simulation, taking 3D scans of the final state. Several recorded metrics show similarities between the two tests, with the simulated models mimicking most of the relevant features and behaviour of real-life scenarios. The results indicate that the proposed approach shows great potential as an alternative for a reliable simulation framework for robotic garment manipulation. © 2026 IEEE.
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