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The University of Aveiro (UA) will participate in the project “VRChem: Innovative Integration of Virtual Reality in Chemical Engineering Education”, from 2024 to 2027, which is financed by the Polish National Agency of the Erasmus+ Program, within the scope of Action 2 of the Cooperation Partnerships, and coordinated by the Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology of the Krakow Technological University, in Poland.

The VRChem project aims to respond to the needs of contemporary education, by stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices, as well as supporting the digital and sustainable transformation of higher education. In this context, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has a significant potential as a tool that students and members of the academic community can use to simulate equipment and processes.

Mário Vairinhos e Rui Raposo, DigiMedia Researchers, and Vera Silva (from the Department of Chemistry and Associated Lab LAQV) are the UA team, part of an international consortium of 5 universities:

• Krakow Technological University (Poland) – Coordination;

• Technological University de Lodz (Poland);

• University of Aveiro (Portugal);

• Polytechnic of Milan (Italy);

• University of Cadiz (Spain).

The UA team, at Digimedia’s XR laboratory, in partnership with the VOXEL Research Lab at the Technical University of Lodz, will be responsible for the creation of the functionalities of the VR platform that will be made available, on an open basis, so anyone can freely explore the materials.

Find out more about this project here.

The Project Back2Basics has launched two new resources in the RIA collection: the SECURITY: a cybersecurity handbook and the Guide: Online Communication and Netiquette. These publications are practical guides, written in accessible language, which are now available in English, but will soon be published in other languages (Portuguese, Spanish and Greek).

Rita Santos and Mónica Aresta, DigiMedia researchers, are part of the Back2Basics coordination team for these resources.

The Project has also other resources available in their webpage, such as videos, infographics and teaching and training resources).

The wrap meeting of Erasmus+ Project Agewell, Service Design for Wellness and Healthy Ageing, took place at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, in Groningen, The Nederlands on 19 and 20 September 2024.

The team took the chance to define future avenues of joint work once the project is completed. Digimedia members are Catarina Lelis and Rita Oliveira.

The DigiMedia researcher Patrícia Oliveira, attended the NFC – Non Fungible Conference 2024, an event about the Web3 (Blockchain, NFT, Art and Technology).

Patrícia Oliveira is also a team member of the Project Blockchain.pt (Agenda PRR), and went to this conference to get to know what is being done by startups and new companies regarding the use of NFT in games, as well as to build networking in the area of NFTs in games, which is the focus of the WP4/PPS10-QUDO of the Blockchain.pt project.

Patrícia Oliveira was interviewed by Restart – Instituto de Criatividade Artes e Novas Tecnologias and the excerpt can be watched here.

The full video here.

The DigiMedia researcher, Ana Patrícia Oliveira, presented, for the first time, a communication, developed as a Poster of the Project “Jogo sério híbrido para a prevenção do cancro através da promoção de hábitos de vida saudáveis”, at the IPO Porto Summit https://ipoportosummit.pt/, which took place from 9th to 11th May 2024.

The IPO Porto Summit 2024 is an international event, part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of IPO-Porto, which aims to promote a meeting of generations and professional groups and multidisciplinary researchers in the field of Oncology, under the topic “Research and Innovation in improving healthcare in Oncology”.

Gamers4Nature: Reconnecting with Nature Through the Creation of Digital Games
SHORT DESCRIPTION

Nowadays, half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. This movement towards the cities raises some concerns about the implications of the younger population’s reduced contact with outdoor environments. This fact, added to the number of hours young people spent in sedentary activities involving electronic media, may contribute to their disconnection from nature and indifference towards environmental conservation and biodiversity preservation. As it is in the early years of the individual’s life that the motivation to be ecologically concerned arises and is expected to have a lifelong effect, the way young people understand and experience nature is related may have a deep impact in the development of a pro-environmental behaviour. Reconnecting with nature can play an important role in the adoption of sustainable environmental behaviours, and it is a process that can be established, amongst other dimensions, through the physical interaction with natural environments, and through the exposition and interaction with environmental-related knowledge or information. In what concerns environmental and biodiversity preservation education, new approaches include the use of digital games, which are increasingly being adopted to raise environmental awareness among youths. Digital games are part of young people’s daily lives, and its potential to enhance motivation for learning and the positive impact of games in fostering biodiversity awareness has been recognized a few years to this part.

Young people are also being challenged not just to play games but also to engage in the development of their own games. Being involved in the creation of games encourages to explore boundaries, increases collaboration and the exchange of ideas, raises awareness towards the addressed topic, leads to more responsibility and better attitude in group work and increases student’s sense of achievement, self-confidence and self-efficacy. Combined with the physical interaction with natural environments, and due to their interactive and immersive narrative, digital games emerge as an innovative approach in the promotion of knowledge about environmental preservation and biodiversity conservation.

In this scope, the specific objectives of the “Gamers4Naure – Reconnecting with Nature Through the Creation of Digital Games” project are:

– to raise young student’s awareness on the importance of environmental and biodiversity preservation, through the creation of digital games;

– to provide opportunities of co-learning and knowledge share based on experiential learning in outdoor settings, through the organization of “reconnecting with nature” events;

– to provide opportunities for the development of computational thinking and communication skills;

– to disseminate and encourage participation of young students in EU coding events (such as the EU Code Week);

– to organize a global game design competition, where teams from different countries will be challenged to develop a game addressing a local and/or a global environmental threat;

– and to inspire participants to adopt more sustainable practices, to understand local problems and global threats to biodiversity preservations and to take action towards a more sustainable and more conscious environmental behaviour.

With this project we want to bring together different stakeholders (upper-secondary schools’ teachers, students and environmental NGOs) to identify local environmental threats, to develop educational resources and digital games able to transmit to information about the importance to preserve local biodiversity and to adopt a pro-environmental behaviour. The main focus will be the development of innovative approaches to environmental education, through the implementation of actions that combine physical and digital nature-connection activities.

DATES

01/09/2020 – 31/08/2022

TOTAL FUNDING

268,723.00€

DIGIMEDIA FUNDING

61,500.00€ (UA)

FUNDING SOURCE

ERASMUS +

REFERENCE

2020-1-PT01-KA201-078789

MAIN DIGIMEDIA R&D GROUP

Games & Transmedia

DIGIMEDIA COORDINATOR

Pedro Beça

DIGIMEDIA TEAM

Ana Veloso; Rita Santos; Mónica Aresta

PARTNERS

      

CO-FINANCED BY

2020-1-PT01-KA201-078789 This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission. This website and all its contents reflect the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

PressClub – Unified Digital Publishing Management Platform
SHORT DESCRIPTION

 

The PressClub project aims to create a new digital platform for the Media Industry to take advantage of new models access, creation, sharing and commercialization of digital content. The innovation associated with the project focuses mainly on the technological component through the use of new approaches based on the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Unified Interfaces technologies to create differentiating experiences for the new digital audiences, thus allowing the creation of added value to the Creative Industries.

DATES

February 2020 – January 2022

TOTAL FUNDING

508.075,23€

DIGIMEDIA FUNDING

178.545,03€

FUNDING SOURCE

P2020 – FEDER

REFERENCE

CENTRO-01-0247-FEDER-039813

MAIN DIGIMEDIA R&D GROUP

Social iTV

DIGIMEDIA COORDINATOR

Pedro Almeida

DIGIMEDIA TEAM

Pedro Beça; Telmo Silva; Jorge Ferraz de Abreu

PARTNERS

Pictonio (project leader)

CO-FINANCED BY

SECURHOME – Monitoring of Domestic Activity of Seniors Through Television
SHORT DESCRIPTION

The SECURHOME project aims to develop and validate a non-invasive device that through the daily behaviour of a person can detect, using artificial intelligence techniques, if there’s a risk or not through their daily activity at home analysing their movement, sound, temperature, use of the television, etc., collecting this data from a non-invasive device and through the use of different artificial intelligence techniques the system will be able to learn the behaviours and the possible variations that may occur. This way it will adapt to the user’s lifestyle and thus prevent any eventuality.

Once the device detects any eventuality, it will send alerts to previously configured family members and to the nearest health care center, in this way an agile and strategic method of attention will be achieved for the affected tenant, thus avoiding having to resort to some type of direct communication for your alert. Also, the system will be highly configurable, allowing for days of absence, presence of pets, type of notification to relatives, health center to be notified, etc. In this way it is considered that for this project the main objective will be to help elderly people, providing them with greater independence and security in their home.

Once the device is developed, two field studies will be carried out to validate the system and evaluate the acceptance of it by users while making a legal analysis of the implications that storage and analysis of personal data by systems may have on artificial intelligence.

The DigiMedia team was involved with major responsibilities in the project related to the mobile application in charge of domestic interaction through the television.

DATES

January 2019 – September 2020

TOTAL FUNDING

90 000 €

DIGIMEDIA FUNDING

21 945 €

FUNDING SOURCE

Programa de Cooperación INTERREG V-A España-Portugal (POCTEP 2014-2020)

MAIN DIGIMEDIA R&D GROUP

Social iTV

DIGIMEDIA COORDINATOR

Jorge Ferraz de Abreu

DIGIMEDIA TEAM

Rita Oliveira; Telmo Silva; Pedro Almeida

PARTNERS

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Universidade de Vigo

Universidade de Lisboa

DigiMedia

CO-FINANCED BY

SHAPES – Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems
SHORT DESCRIPTION

SHAPES is an Innovation Action funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme involving a total of 36 partners from 14 European countries. The project aims at creating an integrated and interoperable platform that will bring together a wide range of digital solutions focused on improving the health, wellbeing, and independence of people as they get older. This platform will offer a network of large-scale interconnected digital services and products, that will empower older persons, families, and caregivers to solve real and meaningful problems. These solutions are intended for older persons facing a temporary or permanent reduction of functionality and capabilities, whether physical or psychological, but also to help those who are healthy to maintain their health and well-being for as long as possible.

DATES

November 2019 – October 2023

TOTAL FUNDING

20.944.318,75 euros

DIGIMEDIA FUNDING

206.784,00 euros

FUNDING SOURCE

International – European Comission, Call H2020 SC1-FA-DTS-2018-2020, Topic: DT-TDS-01-2019

REFERENCE

Grant Agreement-857159-SHAPES

MAIN DIGIMEDIA R&D GROUP

e-health & Wellbeing

DIGIMEDIA COORDINATOR

Telmo Silva

DIGIMEDIA TEAM

Jorge Ferraz de Abreu; Telmo Silva; Ceci Diehl

PARTNERS

AGE Platform Europe
European Union of the Deaf Aisbl
Fakultni Nemocnice Olomouc
Palacky University Olomouc
Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis
5 Ygionomiki Periferia Thessalias & Stereas Elladas
Gnomon Informatics SA
Intracom SA Telecom Solutions
Epistimi Gia Sena Astiki Mi Kerdoskopiki Etairia
Elliniko Mesogeiako Panepistimio
Laurea-Ammattikorkeakoulu Oy
Access Earth Limited
Assisting Living & Learning Institute, Maynooth University
University College Cork – National University of Ireland, Cork
The World Federation of the Deafblind
Omnitor Ab
Future Intelligence Limited
Erevnitiko Idrima P.L.
Carus Consilium Sachsen Gmbh
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Angewandten
Institut Fur Gesundheitswirtschaft
Medicalsyn Gmbh
Clinika de Kay Sl
Asociacion Benefico-Social El Salvador
Pal Robotics Sl
Tree Technology SA
Universidad de Castilla – La Mancha
Fundacion Centro de Tecnologias de Interaccion Visual Y Comunicaciones Vicomtech
Kompai Robotics
Associazione Italiana Per L Assistenza Agli Spastici Provincia Di Bologna
Edgeneering Lda
Universidade do Porto
Agile Ageing Alliance
Northern Health and Social Care Trust
University of Ulster

CO-FINANCED BY

 eMental – Evaluation of digital interventions to promote literacy in depression and suicide
SHORT DESCRIPTION

Depression and suicide have epidemic proportions with an increasing incidence in young people. It is fundamental to develop and evaluate mental health literacy programs to support the demystification and prevention of the disease and to raise awareness. The current massive use of digital media by young people is an opportunity that must be explored in the design and evaluation of interventions that make use of the digital format as a powerful communication tool.

The eMental project involves a multidisciplinary team and aims to finalize and evaluate digital interventions, addressed to young people, structured in transmedia digital contents, to promote literacy in depression and suicide. A proposal for a future extended intervention to the young Portuguese population will also be developed.

DATES

september 2019 – december 2021

TOTAL FUNDING

19.968,65€

REFERENCE

45-2019/393

MAIN DIGIMEDIA R&D GROUP

e-health & Wellbeing

DIGIMEDIA COORDINATOR

Ana Margarida Pisco Almeida

DIGIMEDIA TEAM

Lersi Durán (bolseira)

PARTNERS

Facultade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto (FMUP) – Centro Hospitalar de Entre o Douro e Vouga (CHEDV)

CO-FINANCED BY

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