Abstract
Companies are putting more emphasis on the customer experience, associating services with their physical products with the help of emerging technologies. At the same time, several actors participating in research and innovation projects, such as universities, research institutes, and service providers, are involved in the value co-creation process. Thus, this study describes how digitalisation and servitisation in the context of participation in research and innovation projects contributed to innovation in industrial companies’ business model (BM). Qualitative exploratory research took place, collecting data through interviews with twelve key actors in industrial companies. The interviewees were professionals in management and R&D areas and founders from nine European countries who participated in six research and innovation European projects. The exchange of knowledge and experiences between the different actors of the innovation ecosystem influences this. From a practical point of view, research provides managers of industrial companies with the best practices and describes the main changes observed in the BM Canvas. This study also contributes to categorising companies in terms of their service maturity by associating factors other than servitisation, such as digitalisation and the actors of the research and innovation projects. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.

Abstract
This paper investigates the real-time tracking capabilities of the Long Baseline (LBL) acoustic tracking system, developed by INESC TEC, for near-shore monitoring applications with human divers. The study aims to determine the system's suitability for environmental monitoring under challenging conditions, such as very shallow water and areas close to the coastline, where acoustic multipath effects are prevalent and can cause significant measurement errors. To mitigate these errors, a two-stage outlier rejection algorithm was implemented. The algorithm's performance was evaluated by comparing the measurement data at each stage and assessing the reduction in erroneous readings. The tracking performance was evaluated based on accuracy and repeatability. Two dives were performed, during which positions marked using the developed system were compared with GNSS data. © 2024 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are versatile platforms for carrying communications nodes such as Wi-Fi Access Points and cellular Base Stations. Flying Networks (FNs) offer on-demand wireless connectivity where terrestrial networks are impractical or unsustainable. However, managing communications resources in FNs presents challenges, particularly in optimizing UAV placement to maximize Quality of Service (QoS) for Ground Users (GUs) while minimizing energy consumption, given the UAVs' limited battery life. Existing multi-UAV placement solutions primarily focus on maximizing coverage areas, assuming static UAV positions and uniform GU distribution, overlooking energy efficiency and heterogeneous QoS requirements. We propose the Sustainable multi-UAV Performance-aware Placement (SUPPLY) algorithm, which defines and optimizes UAV trajectories to reduce energy consumption while ensuring QoS based on Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) in the links with GUs. Additionally, we introduce the Multi-UAV Energy Consumption (MUAVE) simulator to evaluate energy consumption. Using both MUAVE and ns-3 simulators, we evaluate SUPPLY in typical and random networking scenarios, focusing on energy consumption and network performance. Results show that SUPPLY reduces energy consumption by up to 25% with minimal impact on throughput and delay.

Abstract
Subgroup discovery (SD) aims at finding significant subgroups of a given population of individuals characterized by statistically unusual properties of interest. SD on event logs provides insight into particular behaviors of processes, which may be a valuable complement to the traditional process analysis techniques, especially for low -structured processes. This paper proposes a scalable and efficient method to search significant SD rules on frequent sequences of events, exploiting their multidimensional nature. With this method, it is intended to identify significant subsequences of events where the distribution of values of some target aspect is significantly different than the same distribution for the entire event log. A publicly available real -life event log of a Dutch hospital is used as a running example to demonstrate the applicability of our method. The proposed approach was applied on a real -life case study based on the public transport of a medium size European city (Porto, Portugal), for which the event data consists of 133 million smartcard travel validations from buses, trams and trains. The results include a characterization of mobility flows over multiple aspects, as well as the identification of unexpected behaviors in the flow of commuters (public transport). The generated knowledge provided a useful insight into the behavior of travelers, which can be applied at operational, tactical and strategic business levels, enhancing the current view of the transport services to transport authorities and operators.

Abstract
Similar to software systems, programming languages evolve substantially over time. Indeed, the community has more recently seen the release of new versions of mainstream languages in shorter and shorter time frames. For instance, the C++ working group has begun to release a new version of the language every 3 years, which now has a greater number of modern C++ features and improvements in modern standards (C++11, C++14, C++17, and C++ 20). Nonetheless, there is little empirical evidence on how developers are transitioning to use modern C++ constructs in legacy systems, and not understanding the trends and reasons for adopting these new modern C++ features might hinder software developers in conducting rejuvenation efforts. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth study to understand the development practices of KDE contributors to evolve their projects toward the use of modern C++ features. Our results show a trend in the widespread adoption of some modern C++ features (lambda expressions, auto-typed variables, and range-based for) in KDE community projects. We also found that developers in the KDE community are making large efforts to modernize their programs using automated tools, and we present some modernization scenarios and the benefits of adopting modern C++ features of the C++ programming language. Our results might help C++ software developers, in general, to evolve C++ legacy systems and tools builders to implement more effective tools that could help in rejuvenation efforts.