Virtual reality experiences are frequently created using game engines, yet they are not simple for novices and unskilled professionals who do not have programming and 3D modeling skills. Concurrently, there is a knowledge gap in software project design for intuitive virtual reality authoring tools, which were supposed to be easier to use. This study compiles design guidelines derived from a systematic literature review to contribute to the development of more intuitive virtual reality authoring tools. We searched the Scopus and Web of Science knowledge databases for studies published between 2018 and 2021 and discovered fourteen articles. We compiled fourteen requirement and feature design guidelines, such as Visual Programming, Immersive Authoring, Reutilization, Sharing and Collaboration, Metaphors, and Movement Freedom, among others. The gathered guidelines have the potential to either guide the development of new authoring tools or to evaluate the intuitiveness of existing tools. Furthermore, they can also support the development of the metaverse since virtual content creation is one of its bases.

The Brazilian Urban Mobility Policy integrates urban transport with traffic planning, establishing appropriate public policies that indicate the need for a safe and accessible public transport system. The major challenge is the inclusion of the elderly and people with disabilities. In this paper, we quantify the impact of rainfall on the number of people with disabilities and elderly people who use the public bus transportation system for accessibility in the first and last miles in the city of São Paulo. The proposed methodology is used to evaluate the co-movements between the time series of free-fare users and rainfall in São Paulo. The findings confirm the hypothesis that significant rainfall causes a reduction in the number of daily free-fare passengers who use the public bus system in São Paulo.

Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) is one of the many utilities made possible by embedded systems with internet connections. Through the usage of vehicular cameras, it’s possible to capture and classify traffic signs in real time with Artificial Intelligence (AI), more specifically, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) based techniques. This article discusses the implementation of such TSR systems, and the building process of datasets for AI training. Such datasets include a brand new class to be used in TSR, vegetation occlusion. The results show that this approach is useful in making traffic sign maintenance faster since this application turns vehicles into moving sensors in that context. Leaning on the proposed technique, identified irregularities in traffic signs can be reported to a responsible body so they will eventually be fixed, contributing to a safer traffic environment. This paper also discusses the usage and performance of different YOLO models according to our case studies.

COVID-19 outbreak has heavily impacted the manufacturing industry, including Brazilian Automotive Industry. The effects of COVID-19 created restrictions in several industry processes as supply chain. On the other hand, several industry 4.0 technologies is able to support the industry supply chain activities in the COVID 19 scenarios, as well it may contributed for the automotive industry recovery and it will define the next steps of this industry. A supply chain is a network between a company and its suppliers to produce and distribute a specific product to the final buyer. Industry 4.0 is related to the technology development and the digitalization process that improve significantly productivity. Considering the automotive process, an important reference model is described in Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Plan, that is a manual that communicate the guidelines of the product quality planning and control plan for internal and external suppliers. In this scenario, this paper evaluated the current situation and the future outlook for the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in the automotive OEM post-pandemic scenario on the point of view of automotive specialists. The results of this research provide an overview of the current situation and the future outlook for the usage of Industry 4.0 technologies by the Brazilian Northeast automotive OEM, from the perspective of manufacturing engineering experts on APQP.

The global energy landscape is rapidly changing, including the transition to a low carbon economy and the use of liquid biofuel. The production of liquid biofuel has emerged as an alternative to the use of fossil fuels for purposes of energy conservation, carbon emission mitigation and agricultural development. In this article we study the co-movements between hydrous ethanol and gasoline C in the Brazilian retail market. A multi-scale cross correlation analysis was applied to the Average Retail Margin time series of hydrous ethanol for fifteen relevant retail markets in Brazil to analyze the competitiveness of hydrous ethanol towards gasoline C. The empirical results showed a remarkable different behavior between hydrous ethanol and gasoline C, for any time scale, regardless of geographical distance or regional differences.