.

Melanie
Schranz

About me

Dr. Dipl.-Ing. Melanie Schranz

Engineering Swarm Intelligence for CPS Applications

Senior Researcher

Lakeside Labs, Klagenfurt, Austria

Swarm Algorithms for CPS Applications

since 01/2017

Senior Researcher at Lakeside Labs GmbH

Area of responsibility:

Scientific and administrative project management of national and international research projects

Grant applications (KWF, FFG, EU-level)

since 03/2019

External Lecturer at University of Klagenfurt

2015 – 2016

Innovation Manager at UPPERCUT group GmbH

Area of responsibility:

Grant applications, supervision and execution (KWF, AWSG, FFG)

Project management for innovative in-house products

Implementation and establishment of internal innovation culture

01/ 2016

PhD in Technical Sciences at University of Klagenfurt

2011 – 2015

Research and Teaching Staff Member at University of Klagenfurt

Area of responsibility:

Independent teaching at bachelor’s and master’s level

Future-oriented research in the field of intelligent camera systems

Administration, personnel management and organization

2009 – 2011

Information Technology (master study) at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

2008 – 2010

Scientific Assistant at University of Klagenfurt

Area of responsibility:

Support in research and teaching in the field of digital circuits and intelligent camera systems

 

Grants

Successful secured third-party grants (local, national, EU-level)

  • Horizon Europe, HORIZON-CL4-2021-DATA-01, GLACIATION, ~8.5 Mio. €, PP
  • FFG, Production of the future: project SwarmIn, ~ 1 Mio. €, PI
  • KWF, EFRE: project ML&Swarms, ~400K €, PI
  • EUREKA, Celtic-Next Proposal: project 6G-SKY, ~ 830K €, PP
  • FFG Talente: ROB-E – Wir räumen die Erde auf! ~128K €, PP
  • FFG Kiras: UASwarm, ~678K €, PP
  • Lakeside Park, 1st place innovative educational concepts, Spiderino project 5.000€, PI
  • FFG, FORTE, project: MCUAS, 873514, ~650 T €, PP
  • EU-H2020-ICT-10-2019, project: BugWright2, 871260, ~ 9 Mio. €, PP
  • KWF, project: MobiCar, 20214|31942|45906, ~1 Mio. €, PP
  • KWF, investment check, 1.000€, PI
  • FFG, ICT of the future: project SWILT, ~ 1 Mio. €, PI
  • KWF, realization of innovative start-up projects (UIG), ~22.000€, PI
  • KWF, innovation program 2016|2017, 36.000€, PI
  • KWF, strategy and organisation development for growth-oriented companies, 21.000€, PI
  • KWF, investment grant (3×300.000€), capital cost grant: 7,5%, PI

Program Committee
and Reviewer

  • Committee Member in Poster and Demo Committee within the Posters and Demos-track at the 1st IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Self-Organizing Systems (ACSOS) 2020 – 2021
  • Program Committee: IEEE International Conference on Network Protocol, Cloude-Edge Continuum Workshop (CEC) 2023, International Workshop on Communication and Networking for Swarms Robotics (RoboCom) 2021 – 2024, International Conference on Adaptive and Self-Adaptive Systems and Applications (ADAPTIVE) 2018 – 2021, Workshop on Safety and Security of Intelligent Vehicles (SSIV) 2017 – 2020

 

 

  • Reviewer for Adaptive Behavior, International Workshop on Communication and Networking for Swarms Robotics (RoboCom) 2021, IEEE Robotic and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2020, IEEE Communications Magazine 2020, International Conference on Swarm Intelligence (ANTS) 2020, Internet of Things (Elsevier) 2020, NSERC Canada 2019 Robotica, Cambridge University Press 2019; Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO) 2019; IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2018|2020; American Control Conference (ACC) 2018; IEEE Transactionson Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT) 2018; International Conference on Adaptive and Self-Adaptive Systems and Applications (ADAPTIVE) 2018; Ad Hoc Networks, Elsevier, 2018
  • Appointments Committee for the professorship in sensors and actuators (2012) and the professorship in embedded systems (2013) at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

Other Achievements in Research

  • 05/2021 EASA, Austro Control, Drohnepiolotenschein, A1/A3 Open Sub Category
  • 02/2020 Patent application, A50147/2020, “Vestigator – Anordnung zur Erstellung eines Modells einer Szene”, ERCIM article
  • 1st place at the call “Innovative Bildungsinitiativen” for the Spiderino Swarm Robotic Workshop
  • Program Manager of a number of scientific events (NES OpenLab2013, Annual Institute Retreat 2013, Research Days 2017, Lange Nacht der Forschung @ Lakeside Labs 2018, Research Days 2019)
  • PR Officer of the IEEE Austria Section (2017 – 2021)
  • IEEEXtreme Challenge proctor (2018, 2019)
  • Contributor for the project FIT (Frauen in die Technik) of the Austrian Federal Government Department for Education, Arts and Culture (2008 – 2012)
  • Continuous organization of workshops and talks for scientific and promotional activities for the study program Information Technology

 

Additional Trainings:

  • Management training for women in research within w-fFORTE (11/2018)
  • Project management course for EU-H2020 projects at FFG (02/2018)
  • Innovation manager program at KWF (01 – 10/2016)
  • Mentoring Program „New Generation Carinthia Mentoring“ at the Business Frauen Center (BFC Klagenfurt) (05/2015 – 05/2016)
  • Course for young scientists (Lehrgang für Nachwuchswissenschaftler – Schwerpunkt Didaktik und Führung) at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt (2013 – 2014)

Research Interests

Swarm Intelligence for CPS Applications

Interconnected devices and the emergence of autonomous cyber-physical systems in dynamic environments show high dynamics that increase the overall system complexity. To handle this complex characteristics, natural systems can serve as inspiration: they have evolved over millennia to master NP-hard problems. In all swarm models, the swarm is made up of many individual, simple, and relatively homogeneous agents. They cooperate without any central control and act according to simple and local behavior. Only through their interactions a collective behavior emerges that is able to solve complex tasks. These characteristics lead to the main advantages of swarms: adaptability, robustness, and scalability.

Modeling and adapting existing swarm intelligence algorithms to cyber-physical systems is a key focus of my research. Therein, additional requirements come from real-world applications including swarms of drones for search and rescue, rovers for logistic, autonomous cars for smart traffic, and machines that need to be scheduled for a production plant.

 

Ongoing projects:

  • ACES, HE HORIZON-CL4-2022-DATA-01
  • Glaciation, HE HORIZON-CL4-2021-DATA-01
  • SwarmIn, FFG Production of the Future, project ID: 894072
  • BugWright2, H2020-ICT-2019-2, project ID: 871260
  • UASwarm, FFG Kiras, project ID: 879682

 

Successfully completed projects:

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schwarmkommunikatkl91

Coordination and Control
Algorithms for Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), cooperative control and distributed processing opened up a wide research field. WSNs are constituted of spatially distributed sensor nodes to retrieve information from the environment and react on it. The individual sensor nodes in such a network communicate wirelessly and their actions are also autonomous with respect to the received information. Furthermore, the individual sensor nodes in a WSN are able to learn from its environment especially through exchanging locally retrieved information among themselves. A typical characteristic of sensor nodes used in an adhoc WSN are the limited resources. They are usually battery powered, have a bounded communication range and limited on-board processing and storage capabilities. Throughout my research, I consider only networks consisting of visual sensors communicating wirelessly. Visual sensor networks (VSNs) with overlapping field of views consist of autonomous low-power image sensors with storage and communication capabilities as well as a processing unit on board. Thus, they have the ability to analyze and process the data locally. A typical task of a VSN is to identify and track objects for surveillance and identification applications.

In my research utilized by the market-based approach, I perform dynamic cluster management including cluster head election and handover. With evaluations in a simulation environment we show the advantages in terms of resource awareness of the proposed cluster-based protocol over the fully distributed approach. Different state estimation algorithm enrich both approaches. This research was done during my PhD and goes on in several papers appearing ongoingly.

Modeling and Simulation

Modeling and simulation of swarm intelligence for cyber-physical systems are the main key points to analyze and evaluate self-organization behavior and its properties. Therefore, we use different simulators that are able to abstract different levels of cyber-physical systems’ details, including Gazebo and ARGoS. Beside analysis they offer us the possibility to deploy the generated code in ROS directly on our hardware platforms.

 

For evaluating control and coordination aspects in autonomous VSNs no convenient simulation framework is available. We established a new simulator for the evaluation of control and coordination strategies using the game engine Unity. The VSNsim provides a user friendly 3D environment for evaluations before implementing the algorithms on a real camera network. The current version of the simulator models multiple cameras (static and mobile) with parallel execution behavior in a pseudo-realistic environment with multiple GUI elements (including moving objects to track). Such an evaluation environment motivates researchers to encourage their creativity in designing various scenarios and thus, analyzing different behavior of their algorithms.

Since 10/2016 Michael Gruber and me started to work further on module-based simulation of multi-sensor systems/ production plants. This was the initial step to found a company in 02/2018 by Michael Gruber (http://sensolligent.com/).

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Publications

Journals, Conference Papers and Book Chapters

  • Midhat Jdeed, Melanie Schranz, Alessandra Bagnato, Sarah Suleri, Gianluca Prato, Davide Conzon, Micha Sende, Etienne Brosse, Claudio Pastrone, Wilfried Elmenreich, The CPSwarm Technology for Designing Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems. STAF 2019 – 1st Research Project Showcase Workshop, pp. 85-90, 2019
  • Elnaz Khatmi, Wilfried Elmenreich, Kristina Wogatai, Melanie Schranz, Martina Umlauft, Walter Laure, Andreas Wuttei, Swarm Intelligence Layer to Control Autonomous Agents (SWILT). STAF 2019 – 1st Research Project Showcase Workshop, pp. 91-96, 2019
  • Melanie Schranz, Micha Sende, Alessandra Bagnato, Etienne Brosse, Modeling Swarm Intelligence Algorithms for CPS Swarms. DeCPS 2019 – Workshop on Challenges and new Approaches for Dependable and Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering, 2019 (to be published).
  • Melanie Schranz, Micha Sende, Alessandra Bagnato, Etienne Brosse, Andreas Eckel, Modeling CPS Swarms: An Automotive Use Case. DeCPS 2019 – Workshop on Challenges and new Approaches for Dependable and Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering, 2019 (to be published).
  • Melanie Schranz, Alessandra Bagnato, Eienne Brosse, Wilfried Elmenreich, Modelling a CPS Swarm System: A Simple Case Study. MODELSWARD – Industrial Track, pp. 615-624, 2019.
  • Micha Sende, Davide Conzon, Arthur Pitman, Melanie Schranz, Enrico Ferrera, Midhat Jdeed, Pastrone, Wilfried Elmenreich, Scalable Distributed Simulation for Evolutionary Optimization of Swarms of Cyber-Pyhsical Systems. International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, 2019 (to be published).

Melanie Schranz and Bernhard Rinner, Consensus in Visual Sensor Networks Consisting of Calibrated and Uncalibrated Cameras. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, pp. 1-2, Hong Kong, China, 2012.

Melanie Schranz und Wilfried Elmenreich, Approach for a Reliable Cooperative Relaying Process. In Proceedings of the Junior Scientist Conference, pp. 1-2, Technische Universität Wien, 2008.

Media Coverage

videos and interviews

WoW - Schwarmintelligenz (radio interview)

Was ist Schwarmintelligenz? (FFG Projekt ROB-E)

Lange Nacht der Forschung 2020 digital - "Schwärme retten Menschen"

Swarm Intelligence Supports Start-Up Activities

Spiderinos in the Educational Lab

CPSwarm full demo (search and rescue)

Lakeside Research Days 2019: Communication in swarms

Interview Radio Agora Kooperationskultur (20/02/2020)

Invited Articles and Talks

talks, panel discussions, interviews

Teaching

bachelor and master program

WS 2011 – 2015, 2020

Grundlagenlabor: Pervasive Computing (bachelor study
Informationstechnik, 2 SWS, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

In-depth course for VHDL programming

WS 2011 – 2015

ICT-Lab: Pervasive Computing (master study
Information Technology, 2 SWS, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

In-depth course for VHDL programming

SS 2012 – 2015, 2019; WS 2019 – 2021

Entwurf digitaler Schaltungen (bachelor study Informationstechnik, 2 SWS, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

Introductory course for Boolean algebra, design of digital circuits and VHDL programming

WS 2014

Digital Signal Processors (master study
Information Technology, 2 SWS, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

In-depth course for handling digital signal processors applying C and assembler programming

WS 2011 – SS 2015

Regular representative for the lectures Entwurf digitaler Schaltungen, Sensor Networks und Digital Signal Processors (bachelor and master studies Information Technology, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

Join us!

stay in contact

I am continuously searching for new contacts to industry and research! The high combination of both sectors paths the way to success stories!

 

For more information, please contact:

schranz@lakeside-labs.com

Melanie Schranz on Twitter

Melanie Schranz on LinkedIn