Senior Researcher
Lakeside Labs, Klagenfurt, Austria
Swarm Algorithms for CPS Applications
.
Melanie
Schranz
About me
Dr. Dipl.-Ing. Melanie Schranz
Engineering Swarm Intelligence 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
- 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, 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
- Co-editor in the Quaid-E-Awam University Research Journal of Engineering, Science & Technology (QUEST), 2019.
- Co-editor in the Research Topic in Frontiers “Designing Self-Organization in the Physical Realm”, 2019
- Editor of the special track “Designing Self-Organization in the Physical Realm” in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 2019; Special Track “ATASWARM: Algorithms, Tools and Applications for Swarm Intelligence in CyberPhysical Systems” in the Tenth International Conference on Adaptive and Self-Adaptive Systems and Applications, 2018 (editor)
- 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:
- CPSwarm, H2020-ICT-2016-1, project ID: 731946
- SWILT, FFG-ICT-of-the-future
- MCUAS, FFG FORTE, project ID: 873514
- ROB-E, FFG Talente, project ID: 3949878
- ML&Swarms, KWF, EFRE
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/).
Publications
Journals, Conference Papers and Book Chapters
- Martina Umlauft, Melanie Schranz, Wilfried Elmenreich. SwarmFabSim: A Simulation Framework for Bottom-up Optimization in Flexible Job-Shop Scheduling Using NetLogo. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH), pp. 271-279, 2022.
- Jennifer Simonjan, Stefano Probst, Melanie Schranz, Inducing Defenders to Mislead an Attacking UAV Swarm. In Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE 42nd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW), pp. 278-283, 2022.
- Pasquale Grippa, Alessandro Renzaglia, Antoine Rochebois, Melanie Schranz, Olivier Simonin, Inspection of Ship Hulls with Multiple UAVs: Exploiting Prior Information for Online Path Planning. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, p. 9, 2022.
- Melanie Schranz, Paul Amann, Raphaela Egger, Sabrina Schifrer, ROB-E–Swarm Robotics for Education in Circular Economy. Journal on Teaching Engineering, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 13, 2022.
- Melanie Schranz, Gianni A. Di Caro, Thomas Schmickl, Wilfried Elmenreich, Farshad Arvin, Ahmet Şekercioğlu, and Micha Sende, Swarm Intelligence and Cyber-Physical Systems: Concepts, Challenges and Future Trends. Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, 60, 100762, 2021.
- Micha Sende, Melanie Schranz, Gianluca Prato, Etienne Brosse, Omar Morando, Martina Umlauft, Engineering Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems with the CPSwarm Workbench, Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, vol. 102, no. 4, p. 18, 2021.
- Melanie Schranz, Martina Umlauft, Wilfried Elmenreich, Bottom-up Job Shop Scheduling with Swarm Intelligence in Large Production Plants, 12th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH), p. 8, 2021.
- Wilfried Elmenreich, Alexander Schnabl, Melanie Schranz. An Artificial Hormone-based Algorithm for Production Scheduling from the Bottom-up. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART), pp. 296-303, 2021.
- Melanie Schranz, Micha Rappaport, Martina Umlauft, and Wilfried Elmenreich, Swarm Robotic Behaviors and Current Applications. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, vol. 7, pp. 36, 2020.
- Midhat Jdeed, Melanie Schranz, and Wilfried Elmenreich, A Study Using the Low-Cost Swarm Robotics Platform Spiderino in Education. Computers and Education Open, 100017, 2020.
- Wilfried Elmenreich, Alexander Schnabl, and Melanie Schranz, An Artificial Hormone-Based Algorithm for Production Scheduling from the Bottom-Up, ICAART, to appear.
- 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, Torsten Andre, Towards Resource-Aware Hybrid Camera Systems. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, p. 8, Eindhoven, Netherlands, 2018.
- Melanie Schranz, Wilfried Elmenreich, Micha Rappaport, Designing Cyber-physical Systems with Evolutionary Algorithms. In Cyber-Physical Laboratories in Engineering and Science Education, 2018.
- Micha Rappaport, Melanie Schranz, Davide Conzon, Enrico Ferrera, Midhat Jdeed, Wilfried Elmenreich, Distributed Simulation for Evolutionary Design of Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Adaptive and Self-Adaptive Systems and Applications, Barcelona, Spain, 2018.
- Melanie Schranz, Alessandra Bagnato, Etienne Brosse and Wilfried Elmenreich, Modelling a CPS Swarm System: A Simple Case Study. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, Madeira, Portugal, 2018.
- Alessandra Bagnato, Regina Krisztina Bíró, Dario Bonino, Claudio Pastrone, Wilfried Elmenreich, René Reiners, Melanie Schranz, Edin Arnautovic, Designing Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems: the H2020 CPSwarm Project: Invited Paper. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers, pp. 305-312, Siena, Italy, 2017.
- Jennifer Simonjan, Melanie Schranz, Bernhard Rinner, Self-calibration and Cooperative State Estimation in a Resource-Aware Visual Sensor Network. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, pp. 101-106, Stanford, U.S., 2017.
- Venkata Pathuri Bhuvana, Melanie Schranz, Carlo S. Regazzoni, Bernhard Rinner, Andrea M. Tonello, and Mario Huemer, Multi-Camera Object Tracking using Surprisal Observations in Visual Sensor Networks. EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 2016(1), 50, 2016.
- Melanie Schranz, Design Space Exploration for Coordination and Control Strategies in Visual Sensor Networks, PhD thesis, 2015.
- Michael A. Gruber, Melanie Schranz, Bernhard Rinner, Demo: The Extended VSNsim for Hybrid Camera Networks. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, pp. 203-204, Sevilla, Spanien, 2015.
- Melanie Schranz and Bernhard Rinner, Resource Aware State Estimation in Visual Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Sensor Networks, pp. 15-24, Angers, Frankreich, 2015.
- Melanie Schranz and Bernhard Rinner, Resource-Aware Dynamic Clustering Utilizing State Estimation in Visual Sensor Networks. Sensors & Transducers, 191(8), p. 28, 2015.
- Melanie Schranz, Bernhard Rinner, Demo: VSNsim – A Simulator for Control and Coordination in Visual Sensor Networks. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, p. 44, Venedig, Italien 2014.
- Venkata Pathuri Bhuvana, Melanie Schranz, Mario Huemer, and Bernhard Rinner, Distributed object tracking based on cubature Kalman filter. In Proceedings of the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, pp. 423-427, 2013.
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)
Interview Radio Agora Kooperationskultur (20/02/2020)
Invited Articles and Talks
talks, panel discussions, interviews
- “SwarmIn – Schwarmintelligenz und kombinatorische Optimierung für Industrie 4.0”, publication for the Instandhaltungstage 2023.
- “Anpassungsfähig, robust und skalierbar wie ein Ameisenhaufen: Neue Algorithmen für sparsamere Fabriken“, press release, 28.2.2023.
- „Schwarmintelligenz in der Produktion“, FFG Stakeholderdialog: Produktion und Material, Infineon Technologies Austria, Villach, 17.10.2022.
- “#Success-Story: Schwarmintelligenz für die Industrie 4.0“, FFG article, 14.5.2022.
- „Karrierewege in der Wissenschaft“, panel discussion, Alumni-Service AAU, 7.4.2022.
- “Engineering Swarm Intelligence in Cyber-Physical Systems”, ROBOTMEET2021, Porto, Portugal, 13.9.2021.
- “Swarm Intelligence in Cyber-Physical Systems with a focus on Industry 4.0”, Summer School Connected Everything, online, 13.7.2021.
- “Deep Dive: Why Are Flying Robots a True Game Changer?“, PODIM roundtable, online, 18.5.2021
- Testimonial for the Girl’s Day (primary school), incl. newspaper article, 22.4.2021.
- “Engineering Swarm Intelligence in Cyber-Physical Systems”, Brainstorms Festival 2021, online, 18.3.2021.
- “Melanie Schranz: Als Frau in die Technik und zum Traumberuf”, AbsolventIn im Porträt, Universität Klagenfurt, Interview, 07.01.2021.
- “A Multidimensional Method for Capturing Spatial Data“, ERCIM, article, 23.12.2020.
- “Schülerinitiative Kärnten & Österreich”, Industrie 4.0 SUMMIT Österreich, Interview, online, 10.12.2020.
- “Schwarmintelligenz und Sensorik”, wissenschaftliches Seminar Sensorik und Datenanalyse, Kompetenzzentrum Holz GmbH (Wood Kplus), online, 1.10.2020.
- “Swarm Intelligence in Cyber-Physical Systems”, TechTalk, Infineon Austria Technologies, online, 7.8.2020.
- “Hotspot for Drones, Robots and Electronic – Based Systems “, PODIM, panel discussion, online, 19.5.2020.
- “Bringing Technology to Live – Sensolligent”, Innovationskongress Villach, 14.11.2019.
- “Selbstorganisation in Cyber-Physischen Systemen“, Lakeside Park Frühstück, 6.11.2019.
- “Technik nach Vorbild der Ameise“, DerStandard, 13.12.2018.
- “Technik bringt Industrie ins Schwärmen“, Kleine Zeitung, 3.11.2018.
- „CPSwarm: Design, Optimization, Simulation and Development of Swarms of CPS“, tutorial at the ComputationWorld 2018 conference, Barcelona, Spain, 18.2.2018.
- “Darknet… ?”, keynote in focus group for digitalization, Business Frauen Center, Klagenfurt, 27.11.2017.
- “The way to become a senior researcher”, talk at Wissenschaftliche Karriere – Ein Info-Tag für TeWi-Studierende, Studienvertretung Technische Mathematik, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, 21.11.2017.
- CPSwarm: A Horizon 2020 Project on System Integration and Tools to Support Engineering of CPS Swarms, talk at the workshop „Cross-disciplinary approaches for building intelligent swarms of drones“, Toulouse, France, 14.11.2017.
- “Digitalisierung… ?”, keynote in focus group for digitalization, Business Frauen Center, Klagenfurt, 2.10.2017.
- „Utopia 8.528 km – Zukunftsforschung & (Fehl)Prognosen“, as part of workshop „Der Mensch im Digitalen Zeitalter“, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt 28.6.2017.
- „Resource Aware State Estimation in Visual Sensor Networks with Dynamic Clustering“, at the 4th International Conference on Sensor Networks, Angers, France, 2015.
- “Demo: The Extended VSNsim for Hybrid Camera Networks” at the 9th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, Sevilla, Spanien, 2015.
- „Demo: VSNsim – A Simulator for Control and Coordination in Visual Sensor Networks“ at the 8th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, Venedig, Italien 2014.
- “Consensus in Visual Sensor Networks Consisting of Calibrated and Uncalibrated Cameras”, at the 6th International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras, Hong Kong, China, 2012.
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