Author: Carla Araujo

On February 27, Chiara Manfletti, President of the Portugal Space Agency was in Madeira to talk about a collaboration with ITI / LARSyS research unit. During her visit and after giving a small presentation about the Portugal Space Agency, Chiara had the chance to get to know some of the Faculty and researchers and their research work in different areas, such as energy, oceans, and storytelling.

On January 19, it was made public that Madeira was given the status of ‘observing region’ in a collaboration with the Portugal Space Agency and ARDITI, namely with Nuno Nunes, Marko Radeta, José Luís Silva, Laurindo Sobrinho (UMa), and Rui Caldeira (OOM), through this newspaper article published in Diário de Notícias.

The new MEMEX technologies will make it possible to tell the stories of the most endangered communities, thanks to the possibility of building narrative paths with pictures, videos, maps on and around the cultural heritage of the different territories. By telling their stories, the communities not only will be able to have visibility with their stories shared to the public, but also to connect with the territory they live in, discovering historical and artistic insights.

The project involves the development of artificial intelligence and augmented reality technologies along different stages: the creation of a software to geo-locate people and objects, the integration of tools to manage the stories structure, and the connection with the information on the territory artistic-cultural heritage. An analysis of the communities’ social needs will complement the technological development from the beginning to the end of the project.

The MEMEX app will be tested by heterogeneous social groups with possible different communication needs: (1) the communities originated by the immigration to Lisbon of the old Portuguese colonies inhabitants will be useful to collect memories, traditions and their contribution to the Portuguese culture; (2) the migrant women living in Barcelona and with whom we will realize activities for the valorization of the cultural heritage of the city; (3) the people in the suburbs in northern Paris at risk of exclusion from local policies, being the unemployment level very high.

The first research study in the scope of the MEMEX project took place in Lisbon, led by ITI researchers Vanessa Cesário, Dan Brackenbury, Valentina Nisi and Nuno Nunes, the company Mapa das Ideias and the ONG Instituto Marquês de Valle Flôr. The migrant participants, 10 young adults, were invited to take part in a one-week photo challenge, between February 5 and 10, for which they were required to photograph places that would convey meaningful value to them. Then, all the participants took part in a co-design workshop on February 13, led by Vanessa Cesário and Mapa das Ideias, in which the participants explored the photographs and together co-created stories around the places along with their shared memories of the sites

This research study aims to answer the following questions: How do the participants tell a story? What is important when telling a story? What is Cultural Heritage for them? How do participants will relate to each other’s stories? The qualitative data of the session – audios, videos and stories co-created – is currently being analyzed in order to build end-user scenarios, inform the requirements that the MEMEX app should have and inform and define the main pilot methodology near the partners and stakeholders. Hence, this first study is of the highest importance for the MEMEX project, and ITI will replicate it in Paris and Barcelona, as the needs of each migrant community are likely to be different.

Welcome to the ITI / LARSyS team! Wishing our new research members a productive research period.

Dinarte Vasconcelos, a Ph.D. student at IST and ITI / LARSyS researcher, supervised by Prof. Nuno Nunes, Full Professor at IST and president of ITI, was in Bangkok, Thailand, at the beginning of February to install and test bioacoustic sensors for monitoring the mosquitoes responsible for transmitting Malaria, Zika and Dengue.

Dengue and Malaria are the two main diseases transmitted by vector mosquitoes. In the last few decades, Dengue’s incidence has grown 30 times more, reaching 390 million cases per year. The transmission of these diseases depends on the transmitting mosquito dynamic and humans.

The project in which ITI / LARSyS researchers are involved combines a set of computer techniques to improve vector monitoring in Thailand, a country where the incidence of Dengue has increased considerably, particularly in the regions of Bangkok, Krabi, and Nakhon Si Thammarat.

The project combines the use of satellite images and street views (available through services such as Google Street View and Mapillary) to identify potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The results already published demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods based on databases of images and automatic learning to identify potential containers that may contain water (for example containers or tires) and thus produce reports that allow the authorities to eliminate potential sources of reproduction of mosquitoes. This information is then combined into a decision support system that further combines information on atmospheric conditions, the incidence of mosquitoes and diseases and other information that may be relevant to help control the vector.

The intervention of the ITI / LARSyS researchers focuses on the development of bioacoustic sensors that detect the presence of mosquitoes through automatic learning algorithms that identify and classify the sound of the mosquitoes’ flapping wings. The system developed and tested in the Autonomous Region of Madeira in collaboration with the Natural History Museum of  Funchal and IASaúde consists of a low-cost microcontroller coupled with several microphones and long-range communication systems. This system has a prototype cost of less than € 100 (it can be greatly reduced in the production version) and can detect various species of mosquitoes (including differentiating males from females) and also collect various environmental parameters (temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, etc.) which are transmitted remotely without human intervention.

The acoustic sensors developed by the Ph.D. student at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon, Dinarte Vasconcelos is supervised by Nuno Jardim Nunes Full Professor at the Department of Informatics and Computers Engineering at IST and President of ITI / LARSyS and also by Professor João Pedro Gomes do Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at IST and researcher at the Systems and Robotics Institute also at LARSyS. During the first week of February Dinarte Vasconcelos accompanied the installation of sensors developed and tested in Madeira together with the project team in Thailand. The project is led by Professor Peter Haddawy of the University of Bremen and also the Research Director of the Mahidol-Bremen Center for Medical Informatics at the University of Mahidol in Thailand. The project involves a large consortium of European researchers from the University of Bremen and the Higher Technical Institute, as well as from the Faculties of Tropical Medicine at U. Mahidol and the Ministry of Health in Thailand.

In the media:

Published in Milénio Stadium, on February 10  – https://www.mileniostadium.com/autonomias/madeira/tecnologia-desenvolvida-na-madeira-utilizada-em-mosquitos-na-tailandia/

Published in Diário de Notícias da Madeira, on February 10 – https://www.dnoticias.pt/madeira/tecnologia-desenvolvida-na-madeira-utilizada-em-mosquitos-na-tailandia-LH5779591?fbclid=IwAR0F0PK1wsmjMz9nIjb1OxMwLWTKzhypKOS1tJ7VFfYVtLTaIPIYFLWQ03w

Published in Funchal Notícias, on February 11 – https://funchalnoticias.net/2020/02/11/tecnologia-do-iti-larsys-em-projecto-de-monitorizacao-de-mosquitos-na-tailandia/?fbclid=IwAR3SLA1dzvrIDo-EQy890PlPoOScsl0Y1pdr59cA3qh2e450MjPK7-Hm5X8

Published in Jornal de Notícias da Madeira, on February 12  – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12P-AIaHgSO6GF2tblJa1TjtRHMacJyZx (printed version only)

Dr. Pilar Calvo was invited by Morgado Dias (ITI/LARSyS) to give two talks for the ITI community on January 9, at Madeira Tecnopolo. One of them was titled “Engineer like a girl” and the other “Design cycle for mass production electronic products.”

Short Bio

Pilar M. Calvo received the M.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Navarra in 2006. Between 2003 and 2008, she belonged to the Digital Signal Processing group of the CEIT Research Centre, while she was also an assistant lecturer at the University of Navarra. From 2008 to 2012, she worked as an R&D Project Manager at IKOR Group, an international EMS company. Since 2012 she is a lecturer at the University of the Basque Country, nowadays within the Faculty of Computer Science. She is currently a member of the ELEKIN research group (Engineering, Society, and Bioengineering). Her research interests are in the area of Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering, Signal Processing, and Robotics.

“Engineer like a girl”

Abstract

The title of the talk is inspired by the famous slogan “Fight like a girl”. The talk is based on the 17 years experience of the author as a woman in engineering, and it is aimed at raising awareness about some well-known and not so well-known challenges of being female in a historically male field. The talk is intended for young women engineers to be, who are interested in gaining some insights and learning what to expect and how to tackle the main issues they will probably go through their careers. Nevertheless, young male engineers are also welcome as they may experience as well some of the topics addressed in the talk, and they will become self-aware of some commonly accepted behaviors.

“Design cycle of mass electronics products”

Abstract

The talk is based on the 9 years experience (out of a total of 17 years) of the author as an Engineer in the Basque Industry. The design cycle of mass electronics products stars with the original idea, but before they can be mass-produced, there are several stages to be performed inside companies devoted to electronics manufacturing service. The aim of the talk is to explain and clarify the different phases and subphases of the design cycle of mass products: new product development, mass production, and product maintenance. The talk is intended for young electronics engineers to be, who are interested in learning about the real phases of mass production of electronics products.

ARDITI is organizing an H2020 event, in the scope of the FORWARD project, about the next Europe Horizon Framework Program, to discuss R&I funding opportunities, in partnership with the University of Madeira. This will be taking place on Tuesday, January 21, from 9 am to 1 pm, at the University of Madeira, Sala do Senado, -2 floor.  Registration is free but mandatory at https://bit.ly/2s5Y8Oo.

Program