The project aims to contribute to improving the quality of life of citizens, articulating, in a sustainable manner, the evolution of digital technology with the potential for more effective interaction with the environment. We will give priority to experimental methods for testing and validating innovative concepts and principles. In this regard, the University of Minho’s Campus of Azurém, in Guimarães, appears as an excellent laboratory.

The combination of the three research lines of investigation in this project seeks to exactly explore this vision of urban development, aiming at sustainability and quality of
life in general.

Research Line 1 – Urban space, community, environment and technological interfaces – will frame a set of innovative Interactive Urban Space products that will contribute for the recognition and integration of the individual in a more sustainable public arena, reflecting their use in different urban/public space typologies/contexts, such as, public squares, hospitals, university campus, transport stations, shopping malls, etc.

Research Line 2 – Universal cyber-physical elements – includes the design and development of an infrastructure to support the project’s information system, from the physical to the application level. and of navigation and multitracking techniques oriented towards urban spaces, both for objects and for humans, ensuring the fulfilment of non-functional requirements (security and privacy) and the metrics necessary for its management.

Research Line 3 – Smart & sustainable products for urban space – encompasses the study of recycled plastic urban waste and define strategies for its reuse, definition of design guidelines for Additive Manufacturing and the integration of functional systems into building parts, and process optimization analysis by parameterization experiments to manufacture a responsive, interactive and innovative urban product that is capable to interact with the surrounding environment and/or population.