Publications

Dissertations & Thesis:

• Robotics in Autism Therapy – a case study, (In Portuguese) dissertation of Sandra Costa submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in July 2009
• Robotic Platform to promote turn-taking with Adolescents with special educational needs, (In Portuguese) dissertation of Jorge Resende submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in July 2009
• Study of the effect of a robot on the intervention with children with ASD, (In Portuguese) dissertation of Sara Isabel Azevedo da Silva submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Biomedical Engineering, completed in November 2012
• Use of a robot in the learning process of basic skills - a case study with children with ASD, (In Portuguese) dissertation of Flávia Rodrigues Falé submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in December 2012
• Affective Robotics for Socio-Emotional Skills Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, PhD thesis of Sandra Costa submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Doctoral degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in December 2014
• Mirroring and recognizing emotions through facial expressions for a Robokind platform, dissertation of Vinícius Silva submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in July 2016
• An application to improve emotional skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, dissertation of José Azevedo submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in November 2018
• Behavioural attentiveness patterns analysis – detecting distraction behaviours, dissertation of Bruno Amaro submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in November 2018
• Virtual face tracking: a system for mirroring emotions, (In Portuguese) dissertation of Pedro Santos submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Master degree in Industrial Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in November 2019
• A hybrid approach based on a robotic system and playware technology to adapt and predict behaviours from children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, PhD thesis of Vinicius Silva submitted at University of Minho to obtain a Doctoral degree in Electronics and Computer Engineering, completed in June 2023

 

Publications in international journals:

• Costa, S., Lehmann, H., Dautenhahn, K., Robins, B., Soares, F. (2014). Using a Humanoid Robot to Elicit Body Awareness and Appropriate Physical Interaction in Children with Autism. International Journal of Social Robotics, 1-14.
• Rodrigues, J., Gonçalves, N., Costa, S., Soares, F., (2013). Stereotyped movement recognition in children with ASD, Sensors and Actuators A: Physical, Volume 202, 1 November 2013, Pages 162-169, ISSN 0924-4247, DOI: 10.1016/j.sna.2013.04.019.
• Silva, S., Soares, F., Costa, S., Pereira, A., Moreira M. (2013). Robotic tool to improve skills in children with ASD: a preliminary study International Journal of Life Science and Medical Research, August 2013, Vol. 3 Iss. 4, PP. 162-172, DOI:10.5963/LSMR0304004
• Soares, F., Costa, S., Santos, C., Pereira, A. P., Hiolle, A. R., Silva, V. (2019).  “Socio-emotional development in high functioning children with Autism Spectrum Disorders using a humanoid robot,” Interact. Stud. Stud. Soc. Behav. Commun. Biol. Artif. Syst., vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 205–233
• Silva, V., Soares, F., Leão, C. P., Esteves, J. S., & Vercelli, G. (2021). Skeleton driven action recognition using an image-based spatial-temporal representation and convolution neural network. Sensors, 21(13). https://doi.org/10.3390/s21134342
• Silva, V., Soares, F., Esteves, J. S., Santos, C. P., & Pereira, A. P. (2021). Fostering emotion recognition in children with autism spectrum disorder. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 5(10). https://doi.org/10.3390/mti5100057
• Silva, V., Pereira, A. P., Soares, F., Leão, C. P., Jurdi, A., Esteves, J. S. (2024). Social Stories for Promoting Social Communication with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Humanoid Robot: Step-by-Step Study, Technology, Knowledge and Learning 29 (2), 735-756

 

Publication in national journals (Portuguese):

• Revista Sonhar: Comunicar, Repensar a diferença (Dream Magazine: Communicate, Rethinking the difference), Vol. 5, with the title "Robotic Platform for young people with special education needs" by Sandra Costa, Jorge Resende, Filomena Soares, Manuel João Ferreira, Cristina Santos, Fátima Moreira, and Ana Paula Pereira, published in 2010.
• Extended abstracted accepted and presented in the 4th Doctoral Congress in Engineering at University of Porto, with the title "A hybrid supervised approach for human robot interaction with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder", by Vinícius Silva, Filomena Soares, and João Sena Esteves, published in 2021. (BEST ABSTRACT AWARD)

 

Publications in proceedings of scientific meetings:

• Paper accepted in EMBC 2009, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in September 2009, Minnesota, EUA, entitled "Applications of simple robots to encourage social receptiveness of adolescents with autism" by Sandra Costa, Jorge Resende, Filomena Oliveira Soares, Manuel João Ferreira, Cristina P. Santos, and Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in EMBC 2010, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference, in September 2010, Buenos Aires, Argentina, entitled  "Promoting the interaction amongst autistic adolescents using robots" by Sandra Costa, Cristina Santos, Filomena Soares, Manuel João Ferreira, and Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in Ro-Man 2011, 20th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, in August 2011, Atlanta, Georgia, entitled  "An approach to promote social and communication behaviors in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Robot based intervention" by Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Cristina Santos, Manuel J. Ferreira, Fátima Moreira, Ana Paula Pereira, and Fernanda Cunha.
• Poster accepted in the I Scientific Meeting of ASD, in October 2011, Porto, Portugal, entitled  "Robots and Autism Disorder: Promoting competence generalization" by Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Cristina Santos, Manuel J. Ferreira, Ana Paula Pereira, Fátima Moreira, and Fernanda Cunha.
• Paper accepted in the International Conference on Social Robotics, November 2011, Amsterdam, Netherlands, entitled "Robots and Autism Disorder: Promoting competence generalization" by Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Cristina Santos, Manuel J. Ferreira, Ana Paula Pereira, Fátima Moreira, and Fernanda Cunha.
• Poster accepted in the 2nd Portuguese Meeting in Bioengineering, February 2012, Portuguese chapter of IEEE EMBS, University of Coimbra, entitled Development of skills in children with ASD using a robotic platformby Sara Silva, Filomena Soares, Sandra Costa, Ana Paula Pereira, and Fátima Moreira.
• Poster accepted in the 4th Workshop on Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, 21st April 2012, entitled Can the robots be able to promote the learning of academic skills in children with ASD? by Sara Silva, Filomena Soares, Sandra Costa, Ana Paula Pereira, and Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, in June 24-27, 2012, entitled Constraints in the Design of Activities Focusing on Emotion Recognition for Children with ASD Using Robotic Tools, by Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Ana Paula Pereira, and Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in the 34th Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in San Diego, California, USA, August 28th to September 1st, 2012, entitled Preliminary Study on determining stereotypical motor movements, by Nuno Gonçalves, Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, and José Rodrigues.
• Paper accepted in Eurosensors XXVI, Kraków, September 9-12, 2012, entitled Automatic Detection of Stereotypical Motor Movements, by Nuno Gonçalves, José Rodrigues, Sandra Costa, and Filomena Soares.
• Paper accepted in Eurosensors XXVI, Kraków, September 9-12, 2012, entitled Stereotype Movement Recognition in Children with ASD, by José Rodrigues, Nuno Gonçalves, Sandra Costa, and Filomena Soares.
• Paper accepted in IEEE RO-MAN: The 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, September 9-13, 2012. Paris, France, entitled Automatic detection of stereotyped hand flapping movements: two different approachesby Nuno Gonçalves, José L. Rodrigues, Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares
• Poster accepted in the I Seminar Technologies e Autism Spectrum Disorder, in June 2012, Guimarães, Portugal, entitled “Constrangimentos no desenho de atividades que focam o reconhecimento de emoções com crianças com PEA usando ferramentas robóticas” - Constraints in the design of activities focusing emotion recognition with children with ASD using robots by Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Ana Paula Pereira, and Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in the Sixth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, ACHI 2013, February 24 - March 1, 2013 - Nice, France, entitled ”Where is Your Nose?” - Developing Body Awareness Skills Among Children With Autism Using a Humanoid Robot, by Sandra Costa, Hagen Lehmann, Ben Robins, Kerstin Dautenhahn and Filomena Soares (BEST PAPER AWARD).
• Poster accepted in the 3rd Portuguese Meeting in Bioengineering, February 2013, Portuguese chapter of IEEE EMBS, University of Minho, Portugal, entitled Robótica-Autismo Project: Technology for autistic childrenby F. Soares, S. Costa, S. Silva, N. Gonçalves, J. Rodrigues, Cristina Santos, Ana Paula Pereira, and M.Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in XII Galego-Portuguese International Congress of  Educational Psychology, in September 2013, Braga, Portugal, entitled “Ferramentas Robóticas na educação especial", (Robotic Tools in special education) of Filomena Soares, Sandra Costa, Sara Silva, Nuno Gonçalves, José Rodrigues, Cristina Santos, Ana Pereira, and Fátima Moreira.
• Paper accepted in the International Conference on Social Robotics, 27-29 October 2013, Bristol, UK, entitled “Facial Expressions and Gestures to convey Emotions with a Humanoid Robot”, Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, and Cristina Santos.
• Editorial of Autism Open Access, entitled "Robots as Tools to Help Children with ASD to Identify Emotions", in April 2014.
• Nuno Gonçalves, Sandra Costa, José Rodrigues and Filomena Soares, Detection of stereotyped hand flapping movements in Autistic Children using the Kinect Sensor: a Case Study, IEEE International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems and Competitions – ROBÓTICA 2014, Espinho, Portugal, May 14-15, 2014.
• Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Ana Paula Pereira, Cristina Santos Building a Game Scenario to Encourage Children with Autism to Recognize and Label Emotions using a Humanoid Robot, RO-MAN 2014, 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Edinburgh, Scotland, 25-29 August, 2014.
• Sandra Costa, Filomena Soares, Ana Paula Pereira, Cristina Santos, Antoine Hiolle, A Pilot Study using Imitation and Storytelling Scenarios as Activities for Labelling Emotions by Children with Autism using a Humanoid Robot, The Fourth Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotica IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2014, Génova, Itália, 13-16 October, 2014.
• Vinicius Silva, Pedro Leite, Filomena Soares, Gil Lopes, João Sena Esteves and Paulo Garrido, Controlling an Equilibrist Lego Robot, Lecture Notes in Engineering and Computer Science: Proceedings of The World Congress on Engineering 2015, WCE 2015, London, U.K., 1-3 July, 2015.  (BEST PAPER AWARD).
• Vinícius Silva, Filomena Soares, João S. Esteves, Joana Figueiredo, Cristina Santos, Ana Paula Pereira, Happiness and sadness recognition system – Preliminary results with an Intel RealSense 3D Sensor, CONTROLO16, 12th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, Guimarães, Portugal, 14-16 September, 2016.
• Vinícius Silva, Pedro Leite, Filomena Soares, João Sena Esteves, Sandra Costa. Imitate me! – Preliminary tests on an upper members gestures recognition system, CONTROLO16, 12th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, Guimarães, Portugal, 14-16 September, 2016.
• Vinícius Silva, Filomena Soares and João Sena Esteves, Mirroring Emotion System - On-line  Synthesizing Facial Expressions on a Robot Face, 8^th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops 2016, ICUMT 2016, 18-20 October, 2016, Lisbon, Portugal.
• Viní­cius Silva, Filomena Soares, João Sena Esteves, Joana Figueiredo, Celina P. Leão, Cristina Santos and Ana Paula Pereira, "Real-time Emotions Recognition System", 8^th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops 2016, ICUMT 2016, 18-20 October, 2016, Lisbon, Portugal, Best Student Paper Award.
• Vinícius Silva, Filomena Soares, and João Sena Esteves, "Mirroring and recognizing emotions through facial expressions for a RoboKind platform," 2017 IEEE 5th Portuguese Meeting on Bioengineering (ENBENG), Coimbra, 2017, pp. 1-4.
• Pedro Costa, Helder Freitas, Filomena Soares, and João Sena Esteves, “Development of Activities for Human-Robot Interaction: Preliminary Results”, Thematic Conference on Computational Vision and Medical Image Processing (VipImage), Porto, Portugal, October 18–20, 2017.
• Amaro B., Silva V., Soares F., Esteves J.S. (2019) Building a Behaviour Architecture: An Approach for Promoting Human-Robot Interaction. In: Machado J., Soares F., Veiga G. (eds) Innovation, Engineering and Entrepreneurship. HELIX 2018. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 505. Springer, Cham
• Vinicius Silva, Filomena Soares, João Sena Esteves, Ana Paula Pereira, Building a hybrid approach for a game scenario using a tangible interface in Human-Robot Interaction, Göbel S. et al. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2018 - Joint Conference on Serious Games - 9th Int. Conf. on Serious Games Development & Application, Darmstadt, Germany, 7-8 November 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11243. Springer, Cham s, 2018.
• José Azevedo, Vinicius Silva, Filomena Soares, Ana Paula Pereira, João Sena Esteves, An Application to Promote Emotional Skills in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Göbel S. et al. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2018 - Joint Conference on Serious Games - 9th Int. Conf. on Serious Games Development & Application, Darmstadt, Germany, 7-8 November 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11243. Springer, Cham s, 2018.
• Vinicius Silva, Filomena Soares, Joao Sena-Esteves, Ana Paula Pereira, PlayCube: designing a tangible playware module for Human-Robot Interaction, Human Systems Engineering and Design, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Human Systems Engineering and Design (IHSED2018): Future Trends and Applications, Editors Tareq AhramWaldemar KarwowskiRedha Taiar, CHU-Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France, October 25-27, 2018.
• Bruno Amaro, Vinicius Silva, Filomena Soares, João Sena Esteves, An approach to behavioural distraction patterns detection and classification in a Human-Robot Interaction, SENSORDEVICES 2018 - The Nineth International Conference on Sensor Device Technologies and Applications, Venice, Italy, 16-20 September, 2018.
• José Azevedo, Vinicius Silva, Filomena Soares, João Sena Esteves, Ana Paula Pereira, Serious games assisted by playware as a way to improve socio-emotional skills in children with autism spectrum disorder, SENSORDEVICES 2018 - The Nineth International Conference on Sensor Device Technologies and Applications, Venice, Italy, 16-20 September, 2018.
• V. Silva, S. Queirós, F. Soares, J. S. Esteves, and D. Matos, “A supervised autonomous approach for robot intervention with children with autism spectrum disorder,” in ICINCO 2019 - Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, 2019, vol. 2, pp. 497–503.
• Silva V., Soares F., Esteves J.S., Pereira A.P., Matos D. (2020) Adequacy of Game Scenarios for an Object with Playware Technology to Promote Emotion Recognition in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In: Ahram T., Karwowski W., Pickl S., Taiar R. (eds) Human Systems Engineering and Design II. IHSED 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1026. Springer, Cham
• Santos, P., Silva, V., Soares, F., & Simões, A. (2019). Facial Virtual Tracking: A System to Mirror Emotions. In Progress in Artificial Intelligence (pp. 68–79). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30244-3_7
• Silva, V., Soares, F., Esteves, J., Pereira, A., Leão, C., & Queirós, S. (2021). Hybrid Approach to Promote Social Interaction with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Ageing Well and E-Health, 69–77. https://doi.org/10.5220/0010468600690077
• Silva, V., Soares, F., Sena Esteves, J., & Vercelli, G. (2021). Human action recognition using an image-based temporal and spatial representation. 2020 12th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops (ICUMT), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUMT51630.2020.9222408
• Santos, P., Silva, V., Sena Esteves, J., Pereira, A. P., & Soares, F. (2022). HiZeca: A Serious Game for Emotions Recognition. In Innovations in Mechatronics Engineering (pp. 393–405). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79168-1_35
• C Magalhães, JS Esteves, AP Pereira, Vinicius Silva, Filomena Soares, (2023). Web Application for the Learning of Emotions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, International Conference on Intelligent Systems in Production Engineering, In: Burduk, A., Batako, A., Machado, J., Wyczółkowski, R., Antosz, K., Gola, A. (eds) Advances in Production. ISPEM 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 790. Springer, Cham, 10.1007/978-3-031-45021-1_13

 

Oral communications by invitation:

• Participation in a lecture to the Masters Course in Biomedical Engineering, University of Minho on May 22, 2009, by Dr. Fatima Moreira (Psychology - University of Minho) and Ana Paula Pereira (Institute of Child Studies- University of Minho), Sandra Costa and Jorge Resende (Electronic Engineering - University of Minho). 
• Videoconferencing with the University of São Paulo, Brazil in June 3, 2009 with the presentation of the work "Robotics Platform for Young People with Special Education Needs".
• TED-Talk in the TEDxYouth@Braga, by Sandra Costa with Ana Cristina Ferreira, where the Project Robótica-Autismo was mentioned,  November 19th, 2011.
• Presentation of Robótica-Autismo Project in the Seminar organized by APEE Autismo Porto, Faculdade do Desporto da Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal, em May 19th, 2012.
• Presentation by Sandra Costa entitled Applications of simple LEGO robots to encourage social receptiveness of adolescents and children with autism in an ALIAS (Artificial Life, Intelligence and Adaptive Systems) meeting of University of Hertfordshire, College Lane  Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom, May 23rd, 2012.
• Presentation entitled Projeto Robótica-Autismo by Sandra Costa and Sara Silva in the I Seminar Technologies e Autism Spectrum Disorder, in University of Minho, Campus de Azúrem, Portugal, June 6th, 2012.
• Presentation of Robótica-Autismo Project in the Seminar "Mostra de Divulgação de TICs que facilitam a Integração de jovens e adultos com PEA nas empresas/indústria”, Gondomar, Portugal, July 21st 2012.
• Presentation in the 2nd International Congress about Fragile X Syndrome, in April 2013, Évora, Portugal, entitled "A Síndrome de X-frágil – do diagnóstico à Robótica" ("Fragile X Syndrome - from diagnostics to robotics"), with Paula Jorge (Centro de Genética Médica Dr. Jacinto Magalhães, Porto), Filomena Soares (Centro Algoritmi, University of Minho), with demonstration of Sandra Costa.
• Oral Presentation: (In Portuguese) ”Sistema de Imitação de Movimentos do Braço por um Robô Humanoide” at the seminar “Programming and Robotics Day” in the European Code Week, Lisbon, 17 October 2015.
• Oral Presentation: (In Portuguese) “Algumas das coisas que se podem fazer num Mestrado em Engenharia…”, Project “Robótica e Autismo”, EB 2/3 Júlio Brandão, Vila Nova de Famalicão, 23 Março, 2016.
• Oral Presentation: (In Portuguese) “Demonstração do Robô ZECA” at the conference “Conferência 2016: Dia Mundial da Consciencialização do Autismo” at University of Porto, Porto 2 April 2016.
• Oral Presentation of the project “Robótica-Autismo” at the Magalhães Lemos hospital, Porto 13 May 2016.
• Oral Presentation of the project “Robótica-Autismo” at the Instituto Politecnico do Cávado e do Ave (IPCA), Braga 16 March 2017.