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Innovation is achieved by a continous effort to excel ourselfs

 

Innovation in its most concrete expression is the way in which the human race has always expanded the frontiers of knowledge, translated into improving the quality of life.

The Fire and the Wheel, in prehistoric times, the Astrolabe, the Latin Sail and the Mouth Loaded Cannon, in the Middle Ages (innovations in which the Portuguese were the main actors), and Computed Axial Tomography or the Internet, in the present times, are examples of the innumerable innovative impulses that changed our life, in all its aspects.

More comfort, more health, more ease of use, more speed, more knowledge, are sometimes giant steps taken by brilliant minds, but more often they are the accumulation of countless small additions to a dreamed goal.

When Thomas Edison was asked how he had managed not to give up after so many failed attempts to create the light bulb, the answer was that he had learned 1000 ways on how not to it.

At Techframe, we believe that innovation is not the result of luck, nor the occasional inspiration of someone gifted, but the result of harnessing and nurturing all ideas, which given the ideal conditions to mature and develop, will be able to materialize, whether in the next successful product or service, or in the natural abandon the idea as a result of its unfeasibility or lack of interest.

The creation of an environment suitable for innovation involves the early and permanent identification of ideas and opportunities, the pursuit of multidisciplinary discussions throughout the development cycle, the promotion of “out of the box” thinking, but also the constant affirmation by quality, by motivation for the effort and commitment in the search for the differentiating factor between one more product and "the" product, in short, by creating a culture of permanent creativity that rewards the winners without penalizing anyone who dared to try, where nothing, at first sight, is impossible.

After all as Oscar Wilde said, “an idea that is not dangerous, doesn’t even deserve to be called as such”.

Articles list

Some articles from our researchers and associates.

Technological Opportunities for the Travel and Tourism Sector Emerging from the 2020 Global Health Crisis

It is unclear, at the time this article is being written, the extent of the impact that the crisis imposed by the virus COVID-19 pandemic outbreak may have on society and economy, although it is already very certain that among the most affected sectors, Travel and Tourism will be at the top of the list. Throughout the text, this impact and its precursors and consequences are briefly analyzed, both from the point of view of the individual as an integral element of society, as from the point of view of the individual as an aggregating matrix, analyzing in continuity the extraordinary and singular opportunity that this crisis represents for Information and Communication Technologies in general, and for some emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Virtual and Augmented Realities, in a context of intermittent social isolation and deep economic crisis, with application to the Travel and Tourism sector.

Keywords – tourism;technology; artificial intelligence; virtual and augmented reality

Author - Carlos Mora

Publication - Turismo Mundial, Crise Sanitária e Futuro: visões globais partilhadas World Tourism, Health Crisis and Future: sharing perspectives, Instituto Politécnico de Tomar, ISBN 978-989-8840-45-5

Flora Generation and Evolution Algorithm for Virtual Environments

A crucial aspect to game development is the ability to establish the player emersion in a simulated and virtual world, presenting engaging content and maximizing the gaming experience. The demand for new and hand-customized content keeps increasing, in playable maps that are ever expanding in size, without compromising quality or differentiation. The usage of Procedural Content Generation (PCG) allows computers to generate game content and produce distinguishable and unique instances amongst the ones generated allowing to better replicate reality and deliver intricate systems without the costs and time consumption of human intervention.

As a key element for the appeal of many games, natural life exhibits both complex and distinguishable behaviors, from species to species as well as from individual to individual. Biodiversity is maintained by processes operating over broader spatial and temporal scales, and as such, simulating plant diversity is a process better suited to operate under PCG algorithms.

In this study, we describe a procedural flora evolution algorithm that can replicate a flora species life cycle for a practical 3D game setting (Universe 51), using scientific knowledge to better reproduce such intricate behaviors. We based some part our approach on complex intelligence algorithms, as well as in some original processes targeted at our project specificities. The evolution algorithm starts with the end results of a flora generation algorithm that can create millions of different flora species based on selected biological parameters. This data is then interpreted by the evolutionary algorithm, that uses these values to determine each species survival chances in the surrounding environment. Our results were able to replicate and autonomously manage plant species life cycle, under a dynamic environment with potentially varying conditions.

Keywords – procedural content generation; flora generation algorithm; flora evolution algorithm; natural life simulation

Author - Carlos Mora, Sandra Jardim, Jorge Valente

Publication - CISTI'2021 - 16th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies

A Multilingual Lexicon-based Approach for Sentiment Analysis in Social and Cultural Information System Data

Sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, has become ubiquitous in our society, with applications in online searching, computer vision, image understanding, artificial intelligence and marketing communications. In this paper, is described an unsupervised automatic method of multilingual lexicon-based sentiment analysis algorithm, with a dictionary-based approach. The developed algorithm was tested in the sentiment analysis of users' publications on a digital tourism platform. The results obtained demonstrate the efficiency of the solution, which presents a high accuracy in the classification of publications in four different languages.

Keywords – sentiment analysis; automatic sentiment classification; lexicon-based approach; social media

Author - Sandra Jardim, Carlos Mora, Tiago Santana

Publication - CISTI'2021 - 16th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies