From the Window of the University you can see the Whole World
Paying attention to the trends and world news, at the Faculdade de Ciências (School of Sciences) and the Faculdade de Engenharia (School of Engineering), both from Universidade do Porto (U. Porto), the researchers accelerate the process of interaction of their communities with the real world. The online economy focus publication ECO – Economia Online draws a picture of how U. Porto is participating in the digital evolution that is sweeping the world and already making a difference in our daily routines, including the contribution of CMU Portugal Program’s research projects.
Keeping in mind that we are in constant contact today and exchanging data, Professor Luís Antunes and his team have been developing a project with Carnegie Mellon University, in the scope of the CMU Portugal Program, HYRAX, to enable networking when communications are down and facilitate contact in emergency situations.
“But imagine a city with a higher density of handsets, if the network is down, what we propose – and we already have prototypes for that – is that the devices communicate with each other. Excluding the disaster scenario, imagine that you are in a soccer stadium and you have just recorded a goal from a fantastic angle but you do not have an internet access; now you can share the video with everyone who’s there. ”
Cybersecurity and privacy projects, or others such as Future Cities – SenseMyCity, which is a crowd sensing platform being developed by Professor Ana Aguiar, also part of the S2MovingCity ERI, that has been developed to improve a city in Porto. Through smartphone sensors, an application logs users’ daily life to assess situations ranging from fuel consumption and street traffic to an hour given the stress levels of the people who are involved in the experience.
Read the article in Portuguese at ECO – Economia Online (June 20, 2017)