Abstract
Engineering aims to improve the quality of daily life on a planet with limited resources. This chapter describes how the European Project Semester offered by the School of Engineering of the Porto Polytechnic contributes to make engineering undergraduates conscious of their environmental and societal impact. The program is a project-based active learning framework where problem-solving is supported by intercultural communication and creativity, ethical and sustainable reasoning, and global contextual analysis. This analysis shows that it fosters scientific, technical, and interpersonal competencies, emphasizing ethical and sustainable design as recommended by several reference institutions through the testimonials left on the project reports and the evolution perceived by the participants during the semester. These findings are supported by a sample of 45 projects conducted by 228 students from 23 countries and 65 degrees. All projects aimed to have a lasting impact on the future engineering practice of participants and, somehow, transform the world positively.

Abstract
Robotics is a multidisciplinary subject that typically involves mechanics, electronics, and computer science concepts. For this reason, robotic projects are particularly well suited to the European Project Semester framework since they allow students with different backgrounds to contribute to the overall team objective in their specific knowledge areas. This chapter briefly presents illustrative examples of robotic projects that have been developed by teams of students participating in the European Project Semester at the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto. It concludes by presenting and discussing student feedback, namely on the program and the projects developed.

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Abstract
In recent years, there has been great interest from researchers in legged robots. These robots have unique characteristics and are suitable for complex working environments with uneven terrains and unexpected obstacles. They can work on almost any type of terrain, overcome obstacles like stairs much more efficiently than wheeled or tracked robots, and cause a lower impact on the ground when compared with other locomotion systems. To expand the application of robotics to new complex areas, it is essential to accurately locate the robot and plan safe trajectories regardless of the environment, terrain, or weather conditions. Using a legged locomotion system raises some concerns regarding the 3D localization, mapping, and trajectory planning algorithms. This paper reviews those problems and describes the current approaches to localize a robot, map an environment and plan safe trajectories for quadruped robots.

Abstract
There has been an increase in the variety of harvesting manipulators. However, sometimes the lack of efficiency of these manipulators makes it difficult to compete with harvesting tasks performed by humans. One of the key components of these manipulators is the end-effector, responsible for picking the fruits from the plant. This paper studies different types of end-effectors used by some harvesting manipulators and compares them. The objective is to analyse their advantages and limitations to better understand the requirements to design an end-effector to improve the performance of a custom Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) on the harvest of different types of fruits.

Abstract
Purpose The motivation for robotics research in the agricultural field has sparked in consequence of the increasing world population and decreasing agricultural labor availability. This paper aims to analyze the state of the art of pruning and harvesting manipulators used in agriculture. Design/methodology/approach A research was performed on papers that corresponded to specific keywords. Ten papers were selected based on a set of attributes that made them adequate for review. Findings The pruning manipulators were used in two different scenarios: grapevines and apple trees. These manipulators showed that a light-controlled environment could reduce visual errors and that prismatic joints on the manipulator are advantageous to obtain a higher reach. The harvesting manipulators were used for three types of fruits: strawberries, tomatoes and apples. These manipulators revealed that different kinematic configurations are required for different kinds of end-effectors, as some of these tools only require movement in the horizontal axis and others are required to reach the target with a broad range of orientations. Originality/value This work serves to reduce the gap in the literature regarding agricultural manipulators and will support new developments of novel solutions related to agricultural robotic grasping and manipulation.