Category: Software

Using swarm Intelligence to tackle the resource slack crisis at the edge

July 31, 2025
Posted by Melanie Schranz

Modern edge computing faces a silent efficiency killer: resource waste. Traditional orchestration frameworks like Kubernetes often rely on conservative, rule-based scheduling where applications overestimate their CPU and RAM needs. This leads to significant “slack resources”—allocated capacity that sits idle while other tasks wait in queues. The Horizon Europe project ACES is tackling this challenge through a novel, self-organizing local decision mechanism inspired by the natural world. A multi-agent approach to…

Redefining distributed knowledge and data management

February 6, 2025
Posted by Melanie Schranz

The evolution of the edge-to-cloud continuum brings transformative potential, but also significant hurdles in distributed data management. The European project ACES is addressing these challenges through a cognitive-by-design methodology, moving beyond simple data storage toward active knowledge interpretation. A core innovation in ACES is the introduction of a resource pool, which presents a significant shift from current edge definitions. By leveraging technologies like CXL and PCIe switches, the system can…

Swarm intelligence in the factory

July 2, 2024
Posted by Melanie Schranz

Modern semiconductor production is a operating at huge complexity, often involving over 1,500 products moving through 300 processing steps across 1,200 different machines. Traditional centralized scheduling methods frequently fail to optimize these NP-hard environments in real-time. To address this, the SwarmIn project leverages Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithms to create a self-organizing, bottom-up scheduling system. Unlike standard scheduling that calculates a global plan from the top down, the SwarmIn approach…

Intelligent boarding to ski lifts

November 15, 2017
Posted by Christian Bettstetter

A novel boarding solution for cabin-based transport systems — e.g., ski lifts, cable cars, subways — is being discussed in industry and has already been implemented in the Austrian skiing resort Bad Gastein: In order to avoid long queues at succeeding boarding stations, a display in the boarding area tells the guests how many of them are allowed to enter the next cabin. This form of access control guarantees spare…

Collaborative mapping with mobile robot teams

January 15, 2015
Posted by Christian Bettstetter

New packages for the Robot Operating System (ROS) are available for autonomous exploration of unknown environments using collaborating mobile robots equipped with cameras. The software offers wireless ad hoc communications between robots, merging of maps from different robots, and coordinated selection of exploration frontiers. A prototype with up to four robots was built that demonstrates its functionality in an indoor environment. There is a broad spectrum of applications for mobile…