Abstract
This project arose from the absence in the market of a modular smartphone controlled robot capable of encouraging high school students to program and apply the physics and math's knowledge learned into it. Therefore this project's intention was to study the best way to develop a do-it-yourself (DIY) cost effective robot using only components off the shelf (COTS) and benefit from the omnipresence of smartphones. With the objective of making this robot attractive to anyone with low programming skills, it was important to make it configurable in an easy to understand language and a simple user interface, like the ones provided by Scratch and the MIT AppInventor2. The functional, physical and non-functional requirements for this robot and the free software developed are presented and validated attesting that this project was successfully completed.

Abstract
This article intends to debate the institutional modes of first-year adjustment to higher education. Specifically, the aim is to analyze and consider the need to include social and academic integration activities in the curricular programs. The presented contributions are based on the investigations over the case study course that was studied using non-experimental and descriptive approach. The “Projeto FEUP” (Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto) course is analyzed as it addresses the mentioned integration concerns explicitly by providing tutoring by selected older students (relating to social integration) and adequate teamwork challenges (relating to academic integration). The presented case study course is given to about 1,000 students across nine engineering degrees at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto, in Portugal. The article includes some details about not infrequent practices such as “hazing” of newcomer students and strategies for circumventing associated disadvantages. The results shown in the article indicate that the students involved tend to see it as a significant academic integration device, regarding mainly academic work and expectations. © The Author(s) 2015.

Abstract
Wine counterfeiting is a major problem worldwide. Within this context, an approach to the problem of discerning original wine bottles from forged ones is the use of natural features present in the product, object and/or material (using it "as is"). The proposed application uses the cork stopper as a unique fingerprint, combined with state of the art image processing techniques to achieve individual object recognition and smartphones as the authentication equipment. The anti-counterfeiting scheme is divided into two phases: an enrollment phase, where every bottle is registered in a database using a photo of its cork stopper inside the bottle; and a verification phase, where an end-user/retailer captures a photo of the cork stopper using a regular smartphone, compares the photo with the previously-stored one and retrieves it if the wine bottle was previously registered. To evaluate the performance of the proposed application, two datasets of natural/agglomerate cork stoppers were built, totaling 1000 photos. The worst case results show a 100% precision ratio, an accuracy of 99.94% and a recall of 94.00%, using different smartphones. The perfect score in precision is a promising result, proving that this system can be applied to the prevention of wine counterfeiting and consumer/retailer security when purchasing a wine bottle.

Abstract
Interest in robotics field as a teaching tool to promote the STEM areas has grown in the past years. The search for solutions to promote robotics is a major challenge and the use of real robots always increases costs. An alternative is the use of a simulator. The construction of a simulator related with the Portuguese Autonomous Driving Competition using Gazebo as 3D simulator and ROS as a middleware connection to promote, attract, and enthusiasm university students to the mobile robotics challenges is presented. It is intended to take advantage of a competitive mindset to overcome some obstacles that appear to students when designing a real system. The proposed simulator focus on the autonomous driving competition task, such as semaphore recognition, localization, and motion control. An evaluation of the simulator is also performed, leading to an absolute error of 5.11% and a relative error of 2.76% on best case scenarios relating to the odometry tests, an accuracy of 99.37% regarding to the semaphore recognition tests, and an average error of 1.8 pixels for the FOV tests performed.

Abstract
This article describes an experience in university and high school cooperation. It is expected to foster knowledge and deep learning in secondary schools by turning extra-curricular activities into articulated subject. The robotics area is very useful and generates interest and enthusiasm, even more so when associated with competition. The experience used Lego Ev3 robot and the students learned to program with a healthy technical approach called state machine programming and the easy to use Lego Software programming tool. The participation is enthusiastic because of the participation in the national robotics festival that leads into international RoboCup Federation robotics competitions. The article proposes a set of sessions adequate for secondary school students that constitute the initial step to find a curriculum for robotics in order to simultaneously learn robotics and foster interconnections with the curricular courses in STEM areas, even extending into structured programming issues. The test involved two participations in the national robotics competition that interestingly involved a team of 3 girls and another team of 3 boys although more students were involved during the year that the experience lasted. Declarations from the involved stakeholders are mentioned, even allowing for a brief discussion for women in STEM areas and technology distance for young (wo)men. Some hints, issues and lessons learned are shown. The advocacy of such informal learning strategy is made, advantages and limitations discussed.

Abstract
The use of Robotics as a teaching tool to foster knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - STEM for high school students is growing. Within this context, the need for solutions that decreases the overall cost of hardware is mandatory. In this work, a 25 euros Android-based mobile robot that allows connecting a smartphone to different robot "bodies" (each composed by different hardware: Arduino, LEGO, etc.) is proposed, targeting mainly high school students. The mobile platform was built using 3D printed parts and uses an Arduino board to control the servos used for the locomotion. To communicate with the Android application, a Bluetooth module is also used. The Android application takes advantage of the smartphone camera and has some pre-implemented image processing modules, allowing actions such as coloured line following, colour proximity detection and coloured object tracking. Another import feature present in the Android application is its coding capability, thanks to an embedded code interpreter. This feature was implemented using BeanShell, a lightweight script interpreter for Java. It allows writing scripts in Java programming language, which are then executed by the robot. This interpreter also provides a way for the user to write a set of instructions that defines the behaviour of the robot, primarily by checking the current status of the sensors and the smartphone camera, and manipulating the velocity of the motors. All of the necessary components (3D source CAD + STLs) of the mobile platform presented here are available online, enabling the recreation of a replica of the robot body. A detailed list of electronic components and its connections are also provided, as well as the Arduino source code along with the installation file needed for the Android application. All the necessary information can be accessed at: https://github.com/ee09115/squirlrob. The high school students are then challenged to solve classical robotics tasks like line following, obstacle avoidance, and using the virtual sensors to create new challenges. By providing this set of tools (Android app, source code, 3D CAD models, documentation), a promotion of knowledge is expected, thus developing enthusiast students in robotics multidisciplinary fields, such as mechanical designing, electronics designing, mathematics, coding, etc. (in short, all the relevant STEM areas). Finally, a general analysis of the usability, interoperability and feature extension capacity is made, always taking into consideration the educational purposes of this work.