Technologies to support recommendations in financial services scenarios.

In the study to be developed we are tackling the case of testing HSU circuits and systems.

The main goal for the planned SMF project is to prepare competitive and comprehensive proposals for the EU funded project to submit under H2020 call or similar large-scale transnational calls (e.g Interreg SI-AT cooperation programme Austria-Slovenia, Interreg Central Europe, AMIF, DG calls). In relation to this, the SMF project aims to develop a strategic and transnational project that builds on the project DRIM's (Danube Region Information Platform for Economic Integration of Migrants) main outputs, specifically a) Danube Compass information platform with information designed specifically for migrants and public authorities working with migrants in the region, as well as b) Strategy for effective information sharing for migrants in the Danube region. The objective of this SMF project is to prepare a proposal that will use the vast database collected for Danube Compass information platform (information for migrants in 8 countries and 12 migrant languages) and create an interactive format that allows upgrading of skills of users aiming to improve employability and entrepreneurial abilities of our main target groups (refugees and migrants). By developing a technologically advanced information dissemination tool that will be more user-oriented (through personalized content recommendations) we want to establish a sustainable ICT-tool for efficient interaction between public authorities and private users (by including concepts like "wisdom of the crowd"). The main planned activities of the SMF project are to prepare a plan how to reach an innovative yet sustainable output by finding ICT solutions for facilitating refugee integration through: - innovative learning and artificial intelligence systems - to build a multidisciplinary consortium (IT, knowledge providers, user researchers, NGOs, public authorities) - to prepare a viable and detailed budget that reflects the real needs of the partners to achieve the project goals.

Geometric objects such as points, lines and polygons are the key elements of a big variety of interesting research problems in computer science. With the rise of modern technologies, more and more of these tasks are solved by computers, as opposed to the classic pen-and-paper approach. Over the last thirty years, researchers around the world have developed different techniques and algorithms that take advantage of the structure provided by geometry to sIn this thesis we consider triangles in the colored Euclidean plane. We call a triangle monochromatic if all its vertices have the same color. First, we study how many colors are needed so that for every triangle we can color the Euclidean plane in such a way, that there does not exist a monochromatic rotated copy of the triangle or a monochromatic translated copy of the triangle. Furthermore, we show that for every triangle every coloring of the Euclidean plane in finitely many colors contains a monochromatic triangle, which is similar to the given triangle. Then we study the problem, for which triangles there exists a 6-coloring, such that the triangle is nonmonochromatic in this 6-coloring. We also show, that for every triangle there exists a 2-coloring of the rational plane, such that the triangle is nonmonochromatic. Finally we give a 5-coloring of a strip with height 1, such that there do not exist two points with distance 1, which have the same color. olve these problems. This area of research, in between mathematics and computer science, is known as discrete and computational geometry. In this joint seminar we plan to use tools from discrete aIn this thesis we consider triangles in the colored Euclidean plane. We call a triangle monochromatic if all its vertices have the same color. First, we study how many colors are needed so that for every triangle we can color the Euclidean plane in such a way, that there does not exist a monochromatic rotated copy of the triangle or a monochromatic translated copy of the triangle. Furthermore, we show that for every triangle every coloring of the Euclidean plane in finitely many colors contains a monochromatic triangle, which is similar to the given triangle. Then we study the problem, for which triangles there exists a 6-coloring, such that the triangle is nonmonochromatic in this 6-coloring. We also show, that for every triangle there exists a 2-coloring of the rational plane, such that the triangle is nonmonochromatic. Finally we give a 5-coloring of a strip with height 1, such that there do not exist two points with distance 1, which have the same color. Computational geometry (such as order-type-like properties, see below) and apply them to problems that come motivated from the field of sensor networks.

We propose a research project in the field of computational geometry, a sub-field of mathematics and theoretical computer science that focuses on the theoretical backgrounds of how computer programs can process geometric entities. Our research has applications in extremal combinatorial geometry, where we are interested in estimating the numbers of different “networks” defined by straight-line connections drawn between sites (represented by points) on a flat surface, similar to straight routes connecting cities on a map. Such drawings are called geometric graphs. Geometric graphs can be classified in various ways, for example whether or not they contain crossings or cycles. For many classes without crossings, it is known that the number of different geometric graphs (obtained by connecting given points) is minimized when the points are placed on a circle. Analogously, arranging the points in that way maximizes the number of such graphs for many geometric graph classes with crossings. One objective of our work is to characterize point sets that maximize or minimize the number of geometric graphs for certain classes. For such problems, we are usually not interested in the exact position of the points, but how they are placed relative to each other, since, in general, our problem does not change if we slightly move a few points. The “order type” of a point set tells us in which order we encounter three points of the set when walking along the boundary of the triangle defined by these points in counterclockwise direction; that is, we get the orientation of each triple of points. In previous work, we defined a relation on order types by comparing the set of crossing-free geometric graphs each order type admits. We characterized order types among which there are point sets that have the most or the least number of certain classes of geometric graphs. However, this characterization is rather general. We plan to obtain relations between order types that provide more insight into the structure of maximizing and minimizing point sets. In particular, we are interested in bounding the number of triangulations (geometric graphs in which each bounded area is a triangle). We will attempt to prove a longstanding conjecture stating that the number of triangulations is minimized by a certain order type, using the insights obtained from different relations and local transformations (for example changing the orientation of a single point triple). Apart from bounding the number of geometric graphs, we are interested in relations between different order types in its own right. We will analyze different types of local operations that allow transforming one order type into another.

The Project RoboCar aims at a new approach in the development of autonomous driving vehicles based on the integration of an existing highly flexible prototype research vehicle as well as object recognition and vehicle control algorithms from robotic science. The prototype vehicle is driven by four independent hub motors that provide manoeuvrability and driving function far beyond automotive standards. Enhanced Know-how from robotic disciplines comprises sensor technology, navigation algorithms and the autonomous vehicle control system. With the integrated research vehicle, several autonomous driving testing scenarios will be carried out at a university campus to enable comprehensive evaluation and potential assessment of the technology. In this way, the potentials of new technological approaches are assessed and analysed by support of objective and rational evaluation of strengths and weaknesses to facilitate decision-making processes for strategic technological determinations in view of future R&D projects.

TU Graz works togehter in Styria to evaluate the possibility of autonomous driving on streets in downtown Graz.

Right-to-left language support for Pocket Code. Young refugees from Syria or Afghanistan, where languages are used that are written from right to left such as Arabic, Pashto or Dari, can learn how to program their own apps directly on their smartphones. Since most teenage refugees own smartphones, and because no additional hardware is required, Pocket Code provides a sustainable, long-term and thus pragmatic way to let them acquire economically significant skills in a fun and easy way. The challenges posed by the project come, on the one hand, from the required long-term collaboration of developers who do not know about right-to-left languages with developers who are native speakers of Arabic, Pashto, or Dari, and on the other hand because right-to-left languages are not sufficiently supported on mobile phones compared to other languages.

Currently, a tourist cannot get the desired information in an integrated way from both the humans and Web services, and much less the joint Austrian-Slovenian services. Typically, Slovenian or Austrian tourist office will provide only predefined national tours and not user-centric cross-border tours. As a consequence, tourists may miss locations they might be interested in visiting and tourist locations get less visits. The goal of the project is to create a joint Austrian-Slovenian center - an ICT supported network of service providers and tourist offices, municipalities, tourists and citizens to enhance continuous cooperation between them. Thus, cross-border tourist exchange, collaboration and expertise transfer between providers will largely increase with respect to the current state. The main project output will be the operational center with humans involved, having support of the following tools: Virtual assistant (providing automatic answering in natural language to the questions and performing services) according to demands from tourists, Communication service (ICT solution that will enable conversation between the tourists, virtual assistants, tourist information workers and local communities), Information sources (inclusion of existing information sources), Recommender system for tour planning, Network of tourist services and services from local communities. The system will help tourists better plan their cross-border visits, discover less popular sites that would otherwise be missed, stay longer and better satisfy their needs. Local communities will easily offer local services and information to visitors, e.g. a tour might include visiting a specialized craftsman and boost selling local products. Tourist officers will get better access to tourists. Project provides the integration of virtual and human services from Austria and Slovenia with the uniform functionality - to provide most relevant information, attract the tourists, and prolong their stay.

ENABLE-S3 will pave the way for accelerated application of highly automated and autonomous systems in the mobility domains automotive, aerospace, rail, maritime and health, through provision of highly effective test and validation methodology and platforms that will save significant fractions of field tests. Virtual testing and verification and coverage-oriented test selection methods will enable certification of these systems with reasonable efforts and project results will be considered for standardization of such systems. This overall goal is founded on following technical Objectives: 1. ENABLE-S3 will provide a modular verification and validation framework that proves the functionality, safety and security of ACPS. 2. ENABLE-S3 promotes a new technique for testing sensor-based ACPS with physical sensor signal stimuli generators, which will be demonstrated within the use-cases. 3. ENABLE-S3 aims to significantly raise the level of dependability of automated systems and minimizing the risk of design or implementation faults by the provision of a modular comprehensive verification and validation platform and systematic coverage measures. 4. ENABLE-S3 will provide a validation environment for rapid re-qualification, which will allow reuse of validation scenarios in at least 3 development stages. 5. ENABLE-S3 will promote and extend existing standards as well as establish new open standards to speed up the adoption of the new verification and validation methods and tools for ACPS. 6. ENABLE-S3 aims at developing validation and verification bricks applicable across 6 industrial domains (Automotive, Aerospace, Rail, Maritime, Health, Farming). 7. ENABLE-S3 aims for the creation of an eco-system (incl. LEs, SMEs, NGOs and academia) for the validation and verification of automated systems within the European industry.

Most of today's protocols for secure communication have not been thoroughly tested and we have witnessed some astonishing discoveries regarding flaws or backdoors in their implementations (e.g. Heartbleed bug, NSA BULLRUN project). The main research question of this proposal is whether model-based and combinatorial interaction testing can advance the state of the art of secure software development, e.g. security testing, in terms of finding and exploiting new vulnerabilities within the context of information security. For this purpose we consider mainly security protocols, like TLS/SSL, SSH and IKE. For carrying out the SPLIT project the aims of the team as a whole are i) to develop new approaches and methods in model-based testing and combinatorial testing, and ii) to use and combine these methods to automate security testing in the context of software development This project will contribute substantially towards protecting the information of communicating parties in a digitally connected society by providing quality assurance of security protocols and thus ensuring the privacy of the respective users. Moreover, the project will also contribute to the international efforts currently being carried out by the academic and industrial community to provide bug-free and secure communication protocols for society.

AGILE project aims to create an open, flexible and widely usable IoT solution at disposal of industries (startups, SMEs, techcompanies) and individuals (researchers, makers, entrepreneurs) as a framework that consists of: • A modular IoT gateway enabling various types of devices (wearables, home appliances, sensors, actuators, etc.) to be connected with each other and to the Internet; • Data management and device control maximizing security and privacy, at local level and in the cloud, technologies and methodologies to better manage data privacy and ownership in the IoT; • Support of various open and private clouds; • Recommender and visual developer’s interfaces enabling easy creation of applications to manage connected devices and data; • Support of mainstream IoT/M2M protocols, and SDKs from different standardization bodies for device discovery and communication; • Two separate gateway hardware versions: a) the ‘maker’s version, based on the popular RaspberryPi platform for easily prototyping and attracting the current community; b) the ‘industrial’ version for more industrial and production-ready applications; • An ecosystem of IoT applications shareable among users and developers leveraging on existing initiatives by key stakeholders in this domain, like Canonical and Ubuntu Snappy IoT ecosystem. Piloted in relevant open areas (fields and in a port) for field & cattle monitoring through drones, air quality & pollution monitoring and in smart retail, AGILE will be easily adaptable and usable in different contexts serving as an horizontal technology for fast IoT prototyping and engineering in different domains. Following an open hardware/software approach, harnessing the power of IoT developers and entrepreneurs communities, AGILE aims to offer tools to overcome limitations imposed by closed and vertical walled gardens for IoT apps development,

High Performance Sailing (HPS) is an international initiative of TU Graz together with other universities, research groups, the industry and other associations related to sailing. The main objective of HPS is the development and evaluation of methods, techniques and processes in the area of sailing regatta, where the aim is to provide tools well suited during races in order to support sailing teams drawing decisions. In addition HPS is intended to support other activities in the area of high performance sailing. HPS at TU Graz is organized in a multidisciplinary fashion working across faculties. The steering committee comprises Christof Sommitsch (Institute of Materials Science and Welding), Siegfried Vössner (Institute of Engineering and Business Informatics), and Franz Wotawa (Institute for Software Technology). This multidisciplinary approach combining different core competences ensures a holistic view on the topic and thus solutions of high quality. In addition, HPS aims at bringing together all students and employees having interest in sailing in order to bring in their technical expertise for solving challenges related to support tools for sailing. Sailing in this context stands for both, the technological innovation as well as for a sustainable and clean mean for transportation and thus nicely fits into the research agenda of TU Graz.

Technology and process development for remote diagnosis and optimization of wind-turbine maintenance in order to sustainably reduce the cost of wind energy. Required maintenance activities on wind turbines are identified via remote detection of deviating system behavior, root-cause diagnosis and evaluation of remaining life. Based on these results necessary activities to grant for maximum availability and lifetime of turbines are derived. The required methods, the know-how basis and the processes for wind energy are designed, developed and tested. The change process for condition based maintenance will be developed, tested and assessed for an onshore as well as an offshore wind park.

Existing configuration systems assume single users. In many domains group-based configuration support is needed (e.g., architectural design and software release planning). The overall goal of We-Want is to develop technologies that enable group-based configuration processes.

The 3Ccar project will provide highly integrated ECS Components for Complexity Control in thereby affordable electrified cars. The new semiconductors for Complexity management (Control, reduction) will offer the next level of energy efficiency in transportation systems. 3Ccar’s impact is maximizing pragmatic strategy: Use semiconductor technology innovations to manage functionality & complexity increase. This leads also to cheaper, efficient, robust, comfortable, reliable and usable automotive systems. The task of TU Graz is to provide means for automated testing of developed componentes and systems.

Spreadsheets are the most successful example of the End User Programming approach to software development. Today, spreadsheet applications, e.g., based on Microsoft Excel, can be found nearly everywhere in companies and are used for a variety of purposes. Studies showed for example that in over 80% of the examined companies spreadsheets are used for financial reporting. Furthermore, companies often use dozens or even hundreds of spreadsheet applications which often tend to be large and complex comprising hundreds or even thousands of formulas. Despite the fact that in many cases business-critical decisions depend on spreadsheets, a complete lack of quality control measures for this type of software applications can be observed in many companies. Not surprisingly, spreadsheets - which are usually developed by nonprogrammers -contain errors of various types. In some studies, researchers found at least one error in every single spreadsheet they analyzed. However, when business decisions are based on spreadsheets, such errors can lead to a significant financial loss or to other business risks as reported by the European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group. Over the last decades, academics from different fields as well as industry have produced a rich set of methods, techniques and tools to ensure or improve the quality of traditional software artifacts. Only in recent years, the question of how to improve the quality of End User Programs and in particular spreadsheets has gained more attention in research and in practice. These developments led to a number of first proposals ranging, e.g., from process-related measures over visualization and software testing approaches to debugging techniques. In this project, we focus on the debugging stages of the spreadsheet development cycle. Therefore, our goal is to provide the spreadsheet developer with tools that support him or her in identifying the possible problem causes (error localization). These possible causes are called diagnoses and represent subsets of all formulas used in a spreadsheet that should be modified in order to make a spreadsheet application work as expected. In particular, we will analyze and systematically evaluate in which ways various existing approaches to software debugging can be applied, extended or combined to cope with the particularities of spreadsheet debugging. Based on these technical and algorithmic contributions, we aim to develop a classification system that helps us understand which error-spotting techniques are particularly well suited for which types of programs and application settings. Furthermore, we plan to conduct laboratory studies with real users at different stages of the project, in which we want to obtain a better understanding of how and to which extent the participants profit from using the provided debugging tools and how the interaction with an intelligent debugger for end users should be designed.

No One Left Behind has been created to take advantages of the opportunities and the potential of digital games to tackle challenges in the education sector. This project will create a new generation of Pocket Code (a mobile media-rich programming environment for children) to unlock inclusive gaming creation and experiences in formal learning situations, underpin meaningful learning and support children to realise their full potential; by transferring game mechanics, dynamics, assets and in-game analytics from nonleisure digital games SMEs, into Pocket Code, which also will be adapted to academic curricula.

TRUCONF sets out to increase trust in and reliability of systems of systems, going beyond the standard notion of functional correctness. It will focus on emergent non-functional properties of complex composed systems and extend - as well as adopt - well-established modelling, verification and testing techniques. In closing the modelling-testing loop, TRUCONF will also explore automated nonfunctional property learning techniques. Outcome of TRUCONF will be a language for rigorous system design, backed by theory and tools that allow the thorough, systematic and efficient validation of diverse non-functional properties of a system of systems. TRUCONF was motivated by the real-world needs of the industry partner and will, once successful, help increasing its competitiveness in a global market.

follows - wird nachgereicht (20140813 SG)

First Responder frequently face critical situations whose reconnaissance and handling is significantly afflicted with personal risks. Modern robot technology can help to reduce these risks. Because of different technical and economic reasons such technology is hardly used by first responder nowadays. The aim of this project is to develop a model that allows first responder to request robot technology and experts easily and quickly in a crisis situation. The advantage of this model is that first responder to not have to hold available such complex and expensive technology and that it remains with an external specialized organization for training, maintenance and operation. First Responder frequently face critical situations whose reconnaissance and handling is significantly afflicted with personal risks. Moreover, due to critical weather situations and increased use of technology in daily life there are situation in which even response experts do not have access anymore (mudslide, hazard materials). Modern robot technology can help to reduce these risks and restrictions. Because of different technical and economic reasons such technology is hardly used by first responder nowadays. The aim of this project is to develop a model that allows first responder to request robot technology and experts easily and quickly in a crisis situation. Similar models already exist to request experts in chemistry or geology. The advantage of this model is that first responder to not have to hold available such complex and expensive technology and that it remains with an external specialized organization like an university or a company for training, maintenance and operation. In order to establish such a model realistic use cases have to be identified in cooperation with first responder. Based on these use cases tactical, technical and juridical requirements have to be defined to allow for an effective and save integration of external robots and experts into daily routine. Moreover, regulations for the external technology partner in terms of maintenance, documentation, training and standby service have to be defined in order to guarantee continuous technical quality and fast response times. The declared aim of the project is to develop a workable and well-founded model for the provision of robot technology to first responder. Moreover, the model has to be mature in order to be deployed in real missions without further development.

In this project we investigate how automated testing and diagnosis can be used to improve the dependability of service robots in industrial envinronments. In particular the project focuses on the reuse of models and the integration into the development process.

For sustainable applications of knowledge-based recommender technologies it is essential to integrate end users into the development and maitenance process.

The Applied MOdel-based Reasoning (AMOR) project deals with providing a methodology and a framework for diagnosis in the industrial domain. This includes the objective to further provide support for bringing model-based diagnosis into daily industrial practice. Diagnosis as a process comprises the following activities: (1) to detect a failure, which is a deviation between the expected and the observed behavior of a system, (2) to localize the root cause for the failure, and (3) to correct the fault, which either be a replacement of system components or any other action that brings the system back into a well-defined desired state. Note that in AMOR we only focus on detection and localization. For fault correction we assume that knowledge of the root cause can be directly mapped to correcting actions. In general this would be a restriction. However, in the proposed domain where maintenance staff has access to the system and where replacement units are available this assumption is reasonable.

Mobility is a major enabler for our wealth in modern societies. The aim of this project, is to enable energy sources and consumers in electric vehicles including electrical, thermal and mechanical energy to cooperate as an energy network and to optimally control this network to minimise the impact of external factors in order to achieve predictable, trustworthy and reliable mileage.

CRYSTAL aims at fostering Europes leading edge position in embedded systems engineering in particular regarding quality and cost effectiveness of safety-critical embedded systems and architecture plattforms. Its overall goal is to enable sustainable paths to speed up the maturation, integration, and cross-sectoral reusability of technological and methodological bricks of the factories for safty-critical embedded systems engineering in the areas of transportation (aerospace, automotive, and rail) and healthcare providing a critical mass of European technology providers.

Vision+ is dedicated to narrow the gap between customer needs or unsolved challenges a. technological availability by research activities focusing on integrating vision systems with additional knowledge from multi-modal sensors, spatio-temporal investigations, but also humans.

At the moment, Europe is leader in the area of high-quality embedded systems. To boost and further extend this leading position, effective and efficient technologies for developing and validating embedded systems are of utmost importance. One of the most important enablers to assure the requested quality of embedded systems is the application of powerful validation and verification (V&V) technologies accompanying the embedded systems development process. Unfortunately, the V&V technologies already in industrial use are still too expensive while often not effective enough. MBAT will provide Europe with a new leading-edge Reference Technology Platform for effective and cost-reducing validation and verification, focussing primarily on transportation domain, but also to be used in further domains. Developed by European industrial key players (large companies and SMEs) in this domain and supported by leading research partners, this MBAT RTP will be of high value for the European industry, providing very effective means to assure utmost quality embedded systems at reduced costs. With this, MBAT will also strongly support the EU vision of zero traffic fatalities by 2020. As this project is clearly industrial-driven it will be assured that the MBAT RTP will provide solutions for real-life development challenges existing in the European industry as this is also the goal of ARTEMIS projects.

ComPoSe — Combinatorics of Point Sets and Arrangements of Objects

This CRP focuses on combinatorial properties of discrete sets of points and other simple geometric objects primarily in the plane. In general, geometric graphs are a central topic in discrete and computational geometry, and many important questions in mathematics and computer science can be formulated as problems on geometric graphs. In the current context, several families of geometric graphs, such as proximity and skeletal structures, constitute useful abstractions for the study of combinatorial properties of the point sets on which they are defined. For arrangements of other objects, such as lines or convex sets, their combinatorial properties are usually also described via an underlying graph structure.

The following four tasks are well-known hard problems in this area and will form the backbone of the current project. We will consider the intriguing class of Erdős-Szekeres type problems, variants of graph problems with colored vertices, counting and enumeration problems for specific classes of geometric graphs, and generalizations of order types as a versatile tool to investigate the combinatorics of point sets. All these problems are combinatorial problems on geometric graphs and are interrelated in the sense that approaches developed for one of them will also be useful for the others. Moreover, progress in one direction might provide a better understanding for related questions. Our main objective is to gain deeper insight into the structure of this type of problems and to contribute major steps towards their final solution.

Erdős-Szekeres problems. We will investigate specific variants of this famous group of problems, such as colored versions, and use newly developed techniques, such as a recent generalized notion of convexity, to progress on this topic. A typical example is the convex monochromatic quadrilateral problem in Section (iv) of the Call for Outline Proposals: Prove or disprove that every (sufficiently large) bichromatic point set contains an empty convex monochromatic quadrilateral. Recent progress on this and other Erdős-Szekeres type problems has been made by the PIs Aichholzer, Hurtado, Pach, Valtr, and Welzl.

Colored point sets. An interesting family of questions is the existence of constrained colorings of point sets. We may consider, for instance, the problem of coloring a set of points in a way such that any unit disk with sufficiently many points contains all colors. Also, colored versions of classical Helly-type results continue to be a source of fundamental problems, requiring the use of combinatorial and topological tools. In particular we are interested in colored versions of Tverberg-type results and their generalization of Tverberg-Vrećica-type. Pach founded the class of ‘covering colored sets’ problems and will cooperate on these problems with Cardinal and Felsner in particular, but also with all other PIs.

Counting, enumerating, and sampling of crossing-free configurations. Planar graphs are a core topic in abstract graph theory. Their counterpart in geometric graph theory are crossing-free (plane) graphs. Interesting questions arise from considering specific classes of plane graphs, such as triangulations, spanning cycles, spanning trees, and matchings. For example, the flip-graph of the set of all graphs of a given class allows a fast enumeration of all elements from this class and even efficient optimization with respect to certain criteria. But when it comes to more intricate demands, like counting or sampling a random element, very little is understood. We will put emphasis on counting, enumerating, and sampling methods for several of the mentioned graph classes. Related extremal results (e.g. upper bounds on the number of triangulations) will also be considered for other classes, like string graphs of a fixed order k (intersection graphs of curves in the plane with at most k intersections per pair) or visibility graphs in the presence of at most k connected obstacles. Aichholzer, Hurtado, and Welzl have been involved in recent progress on lower and upper bounds for the number of several mentioned classes of geometric graphs and will cooperate with Pach (intersection graphs), Valtr, and Felsner (higher dimensions) on enumerating and counting.

Order types (rank 3 oriented matroids). Order types play a central role in the above mentioned problems, and constitute a useful tool to investigate the combinatorics of point sets. This is done, e.g., by providing small instances of vertex sets for extremal geometric graphs in enumeration problems. Our goal is to generalize, and at the same time specialize, this concept. For example, we plan to investigate the k-set problem as well as a generalization of the Erdős-Szekeres theorem for families of convex bodies in the plane. Typically, progress on the k-set problem has frequently been achieved in the language of pseudoline arrangements, which are dual to order types. In particular we are interested in combinatorial results ranging from Sylvester-type results to counting certain cells, and the number and structure of arrangements of n pseudo-lines. Felsner is an expert on pseudo-line arrangements and will collaborate here with Valtr, Pach, Welzl and Aichholzer on order types. Moreover all PIs have been working on the kset problem individually and will make a joint afford.

This CRP tackles fundamental questions at the intersection of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is well known that in this area some problems require only days to be solved, others may take decades or even more. Thus, the working schedule with respect to obtaining the desired theoretical results must follow the standard approach: Continuation of work in progress, evaluation of the results obtained by other authors and groups, and continuous identification of new directions for progress and exploration, hence always advancing the frontiers of knowledge. Since it is infeasible to impose a proper temporal order on the objectives and milestones to be attained - the conceptual implications are manifold, and many of the stated objectives are strongly interrelated - it will be the very progress of research and the obtained results that mark our progress in time. This is guaranteed by the competence of the team. The major 'visible' milestones will be the regular presentations of joint papers in the main conferences of the field, the corresponding submissions to journals, and a series of progress reports that will help in keeping a clear and consistent guidance and interaction with the other teams.

Several of the mentioned problems are long-standing open questions and known to be hard. Therefore we will consider several specific variants of them to determine how far state-of-the-art methods can be used and where new approaches have to be found. This will definitely improve our understanding of the structure of these problems, with the goal of making major contributions towards their solution or, in the ideal case, to finally settle them. Most of our approaches will be of theoretical nature. But we will also make intensive use of computers for enumeration and experiments, to get initial insights into the structure of problems, or to support or refute conjectures.

It is well known that the mentioned problems have resisted several previous attacks and therefore require the cooperation of researchers with strong and complementary expertise. We consider large-scale collaboration on these topics as one of the main ingredients for success. Thus we will not have individual projects running in parallel, but all participants will jointly work on the topics, in a massive collaborative effort. To guarantee a strong interaction between the members of the group we will maintain regular exchanges of senior researchers and students, regular joint research workshops (1-2 per year), and frequent visits.

Computational Geometry is a relatively young and very active field of research in the intersection of mathematics and theoretical computer science. Studying algorithms and data structures have been main objectives of this growing discipline. Although geometric graphs are structures defined by geometric properties, like x- and y-coordinates, they have a highly discrete nature. Straight lines spanned by a finite set of discrete points give rise to simple and memory efficient data structures. While not loosing the geometric information, geometric graphs additionally provide combinatorial context (like neighborhood information) that is sufficient for many applications and allows for very efficient and stable algorithms. Moreover, for many problems the geometric information is not needed for their solution. In these cases, point sets, geometric in principle, can be stored and used in a purely combinatorial way. A simple example is the construction of the convex hull of a point set, which is an intrinsic task of countless algorithms. For this it is sufficient to know for any triple a,b,c of points whether c is to the left or to the right of the straight line spanned by a and b. A data structure that stores this information is the so called order type.

Not to be forced to rely on geometric information has one major advantage: It enables for simple, exact, and robust algorithms. For these reasons, Computational Geometry has become highly interweaved with fields of Discrete Geometry like Combinatorial Geometry. In the proposed project we want to explore a group of interrelated questions that can be reduced to purely combinatorial problems.

One exception from this group of purely combinatorial problems is the question of blocking Delaunay triangulations on bi-colored point sets. The order type does not provide the Delaunay property for quadruples of points, an in-circle property needed for Delaunay triangulation construction. An extended order type, for instance, a “Delaunay order type” mapping the Delaunay property to purely combinatorial data, could help solving this and many other problems on Delaunay triangulations by answering how many different Delaunay triangulation exist for a given “classical” order type.

But even though not of pure combinatorial nature, this subproblem is related to the other proposed problems. General methods on bi-colored point sets can be applied to the problems on compatible geometric graphs, isomorphic plane geometric graphs, questions on k-convexity, and also, of course, the Erdős-Szekeres type problems on bi-colored point sets. Further, new insights and results on any of these problems will have implications on the whole project and also to many other problems from Discrete & Computational Geometry.

In the context of this project, examples for interesting classes of geometric graphs are triangulations, pseudo-triangulations, spanning trees, spanning circles, spanning paths, and (perfect) matchings. As already mentioned, the proposed problems are interrelated parts of one project. It is our strong belief that attacking these problems in a combined attempt will have synergetic effects to all parts. This will help to make considerable progress on the presented questions, to gain additional insight into their structure, and to finally answer at least some of them.

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The principles of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) have been receiving high attention lately, and are nowadays widely established in the software industry for the application in many domains. The fast evolution of available technology entails the development of new complex domains, and in turn enables and drives active research in fields such as self-optimizing distributed systems, autonomic computing, adaptive systems, or cloud computing. Nowadays SOA-based systems consist of a multitude of Web services, registries/brokers, mediators, message buses, monitors, governance systems and many more components. This ever-growing complexity leads however to a rather high error-proneness, due to the large amount of components and complex as well as subtle links and dependencies between individual system parts. Today there exist numerous solutions that assist designers in testing single Web services. We are however faced with a lack of options that enable methodical system-wide runtime tests of complex SOA systems. We argue that a system-wide high-quality assessment in real conditions is an essential factor in the process of facing today's complexity of SOAs and assure the quality of related prototypes and production systems while keeping development time within manageable bounds. With this project, we face the challenge to provide a methodology and related technologies for a high-quality development environment for SOAs. Specifically we will facilitate the development of SOA models that enable an automated construction of realistic testbeds and high-quality test-suites for system-wide runtime tests. These runtime tests will enable the assessment of important system traits like performance, stability, robustness, scalability, and other functional and non-functional properties in real world scenarios and conditions. Furthermore, we will integrate diagnostic reasoning in the model itself and the testing process. Developed models will thus also contain diagnostic reasoning aspects, so that for failing tests we will provide engineers and researchers with the means to isolate faults using model-based diagnosis techniques. The integration of ideas from the testing as well as model-based diagnosis communities in an active diagnosis'' step will enable us to derive additional tests for the discrimination between ambiguous diagnoses, an essential factor in our proposed work-flow. The diagnostic aspects of the model will also act as additional and interesting criteria for the test-suite generation process. With our focus on providing a methodology and related technologies for a high-quality assessment of SOA traits under realistic conditions, we address current needs of researchers and engineers in this area. We will enable them to assure the quality of their prototypes and products by finding errors with high quality system-wide runtime tests and the option to isolate corresponding faults using diagnostic reasoning. The models will also allow very early design assessment. In the course of the extensive research necessary to achieve our aims, we will integrate the know-how from multiple communities (SOA, testing, model-based diagnosis). As a consequence, in our vision, we expect to give these communities new impulses by the know-how transfer resulting from this project, which, besides our achievements, will sparkle additional research by other groups.

Ziel ist, die Frage zu beantworten, wie Recommender Technologien im Rahmen von Requirements Engineering Prozessen gewinnbringend eingesetzt werden können. Viele Softwareprojekte sind durch eine hohe Anzahl von Anforderungen (Requirements) charakterisiert, die mit den vorhandenen Ressourcen nicht vollständig umgesetzt werden können. Effektives Requirements Engineering wird von immer höherer Bedeutung bei Partnern.

Todays dependable computer-based infrastructures rapidly grow in complexity due to a continuous evolution towards very large, heterogeneous, highly dynamic and ubiquitous computer systems. This trend of a growing complexity is a serious challenge to the task of engineering trustworthy systems: the more complex a system is, the more difficult is the verification of the fulfilment of its dependability requirements. It seems that despite the many advances in automated verification, the demand for new features and flexibility always creates systems that provide the next barrier for auto- mated verification. Where verification is not possible to establish trust, Sir Popper proposed falsification. TRUFAL will implement this idea by applying mutation analysis to the modelling level, leading to a new form of fault-oriented model-based testing. Mutation testing is strongly related to safety and security testing. Today, no commercial tools exist that combine mutation testing and model-based testing. One reason is the complexity of the algorithms behind mutation testing (equivalent mutant problem). The aim is to develop such a new test case generator that is able to handle models of industrial scale. We will exploit the newest results and techniques from formal methods: formal intermediate models, model decomposition and concolic (concrete and symbolic) execution. This tool, together with domain specific fault models, will be integrated in the quality assurance process of our industrial partners in the safety-critical transportation domain: automotive and railways, which in a mid-term range can lead to improvement of their development processes. The objective is to reduce their testing efforts by at least 10% while providing a measurable and scientifically defendable statement of trust in their systems in terms of fault coverage. All techniques will be well-founded in scientific theory.

With globalization and the resulting worldwide competition, high quality systems have crystallized as one way to compete with business rivals. Using a formal temporal language to state the behavioral specification of a protocol, component, or entire system, is a first step towards a high quality product and an efficient development process: It makes subtle questions explicit that otherwise might be hidden in the ambiguity of natural language, and it enables automatic tools. Obviously, a formal notation is not enough to ensure the quality of a specification. Current research, however, mainly focuses on the verification phase, where for example a chip design is verified against its behavioral specification, and not on assisting the designer when writing the specification itself. This is somewhat surprising, as industrial data show that about 50 percent of product defects and about 80 percent of rework efforts can be traced back to flawed specifications. With this project, we face the challenge to provide diagnostic information in the process of developing or verifying formal temporal specifications. Specifically, we will tackle the questions of why a specific trace is a counterexample or witness, and that of what is wrong with a specification if a specific behavior should or should not have been contained by it, and also that of how to properly explain (complex) formal temporal properties. For this purpose, we will integrate the concept of model-based diagnosis from the artificial intelligence community with ideas and techniques that are well-known in the context of temporal logics and verification, like model-checking. Model-based diagnosis will allow us to diagnose the cause of encountered problems during formal specification development, so that we will be able to meet important needs of involved scientists and designers. A general aim of ours will be to provide the scientist or designer with information directly related to the specification, rather than information related to a derived automaton. In order to offer an attractive platform, we will consider the well-known Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) and also extensions suggested by newer languages like the Property Specification Language (PSL). Although LTL and PSL have their origin in the design of programs and electronic hardware, LTL has, for instance, also been used in other applications like the maintenance of knowledge-bases. Thus we will provide a solution that is usable in any application that draws from formal temporal specifications. With our focus on providing diagnostic information which eases the development, maintenance, and application of formal temporal specifications, as well as increases their quality, we expect this project to leverage the incorporation of formal temporal descriptions in industry and also scientific projects. In our vision, we expect that our integration of ideas and technologies from multiple research communities will provide new stimuli for future research.

http://www.ist.tugraz.at/icone.html

15% - 40% of the overall costs of a configurator project are related to configuration knowledge base (KB) development and maintenance. Therefore, one of the most important challenges in the development and maintenance of knowledge bases is the effective support of knowledge engineering tasks. The basis of effective knowledge base development and maintenance operations is the understanding of the KB and the support of fault identification and repair. These issues are within the major focus of the ICONE project. The ICONE knowledge acquisition environment will include the following functionalities: Preferred diagnoses: based on a given set of test cases and complexity metrics, preferred diagnoses are calculated and presented to the knowledge engineer. Redundancy detection: in addition to detection of inconsistencies in the knowledge base, ICONE components will support the identification of redundancies which can deteriorate the performance of search algorithms and increase knowledge acquisition overheads. Automated generation of test cases: in the context of diagnosis, test cases will be automatically generated and used in regression tests. Intelligent quality management: complexity metrics and refactoring rules which are especially developed for configuration scenarios will help to improve the quality of (configuration) knowledge bases. Intelligent analysis and navigation: knowledge engineers will be supported by recommender algorithms in the analysis, development, and maintenance of knowledge bases.

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If an autonomous robot has to robustly act in a dynamic real world environment, it has to be able to autonomously cope with unexpected, unforeseen or ambiguous situations. A common reason for such situations is that the current state of the world is inconsistent with the internal belief or knowledge base of the robot. For instance the robot believes that it is in a different office as it is in reality. Usually this is caused by uncertainties in the robots acting and sensing or by exogenous events the robot is not able to perceive or to control. If a robot is not aware of such situations it is doomed to fail in fulfill its task because the decision making of the robot relies on a consistent belief. Due to its reasoning capabilities humans are very good in handling such phenomena. They use common sense reasoning to detect such inconsistencies. Moreover, they are able to perform actions in order to reduce inconsistencies. For instance if a person does not exactly know in which floor of a building it may go back to the elevator or stair case and look for the right floor. In the project we propose a reasoning approach which allows a robot to detect inconsistencies in its belief (abstract knowledge base) and to derive repair actions which remove or at least reduce inconsistencies in its belief. The approach uses a background model (common sense knowledge) about how the robot and its environment should work and methods of model-based diagnosis to detect inconsistencies in the belief and to locate the root cause for the inconsistency, e.g., facts which are wrong or uncertain. Furthermore, the approach automatically generates repair plans the robot is able to perform in order to reduce the inconsistency by confirming or deleting facts from the knowledge base.

The project Simulation and Configuration of Mobile Networks for M2M Applications (SIMOA) aims in providing foundations for simulation, configuration, and optimization of mobile phone networks considering new application areas of machine-2-machine (M2M) communication. SIMOA focuses on developing a modeling language that allows for stating the problem domain as well as future user behavior in order to forecast changes in the network structure and functionality. The main challenge is the ability to state temporal and spatial knowledge. The FFG, Kapsch CarrierCom, and Kapsch BusinessCom fund SIMOA, which started in 2010.

Casa Vecchia aims to evaluate and improve AAL solutions with regard to their suitability for daily use. Therefore a representative system will be installed in 20 households of elderly and will be thoroughly evaluated during three years. Central points of interest are the usability, the integration of end-users and the acquisition of long-term data based on real life conditions. Results will be made available to the scientific community.

Das Forschungsprogramm Softnet II adressiert qualitäts-bezogene Herausforderungen in der modernen Software Entwicklung dies reicht vom Nutzbarmachen von implizitem Ingenieurswissen über Methoden, Techniken und Tools, der kundenspezifischen Adaption von Testautomatisierung, der tool-gestützten Überwachung von Qualitätszielen und der Entwicklung des Software-Qualitätsstatus, bis hin zur Wiederverwendbarkeit von QS-Methoden im Kontext von Software- Produktlinien und neuerdings aufkommenden Vehicle-to-Vehicle Architekturen. Das Herzstück von Softnet II, das Continuos Defect Forecasting and Detection Projekt, integriert Modelle zur Fehlervorhersage mit modernen Testtechniken. (Weiterführung des K-net Softnet Austria (1.05.2006-31.12.2010))

The low quality of customer support/service in the financial services domain requires new solutions. Such solutions should enable customers to easily (re-)design financial portfolios on their own. Existing software solutions are product-centered and thus lack an integrated view on the financial situation of the customer. The research project WECARE focuses on the development of new configuration and recommendation technologies that help to provide an integrated view on the customer situation. Key technologies in this context are intelligent recommendation and repair mechanisms that support customers in the design of their portfolio. On a technical level, the goals of WECARE are: - Development of domain-independent algorithms for the personalized recommendation of feature values and configurations. - Development of domain-independent algorithms for the recommendation of reconfigurations (in the case of inconsistent configurations/portfolios). - Evaluation of the developed software components in the context of empirical studies.

The general topic of this project is the investigation of geometric graphs, i.e., graphs where the vertex set is a point set in the plane and the edges are straight line segments spanned by these points. Throughout we assume the points to be in general position, that is no three of them lie on a common line, and to be labeled. Geometric graphs are a versatile data structure, as they include triangulations, Euclidean spanning trees, spanning paths, polygonalizations, plane perfect matchings and so on. The investigation of geometric graphs belongs to the field of (combinatorial) mathematics, graph theory, as well as to discrete and computational geometry. The alliance of our two research groups will perfectly cover these fields. For example this will allow us to use an interesting combination of enumerative investigations (lead by the Austrian team) and theoretical research (coordinated by the Spanish group). Let us point out that this combination of theoretical knowledge and practical experience, which is perfectly provided by the combination of these two teams, will be essential for the success of this project. There are many classic as well as new tantalizing problems on geometric graphs, and the investigation of seemingly unrelated questions often leads to new relations and deeper structural insight. So the focus of this project is to investigate several classes of problems with the common goal of optimizing properties of geometric graphs.

MOGENTES aims at significantly enhancing testing and verification of dependable embedded systems by means of automated generation of test-cases relying on development of new approaches as well as innovative integration of state-of-the-art techniques. Driven by the needs of its industrial partners, it will address both testing of non-functional issues like reliability, by e.g. system stress and overload tests, and functional safety tests, meeting the requirements of standards such as IEC 61508, ISO WD 26262, or AUTOSAR. MOGENTES will demonstrate that different domains with a wide variety of requirements can significantly benefit from a common model-based approach for achieving automated generation of efficient test-cases and for verifying system safety correctness using formal methods and fault injection, as this approach increases system development productivity while achieving predictable system dependability properties. For that purpose, proof-of-concept demonstrations will show the applicability of the developed technologies in two application domains: railway and automotive. In particular, MOGENTES aims at the application of these technologies in large industrial systems, simultaneously enabling application domain experts (with rather little knowledge and experience in usage of formal methods) to use them with minimal learning effort. All in all, MOGENTES will increase knowledge and develop new techniques and tools in the area of verification and validation of dependable embedded systems which can be applied in model-based development processes also by non-experts in formal methods.

The aim of this project is to develop methods and models which enable autonomous and possibly mobile systems like robots to adapt their behaviour after internal faults and unexpected interactions with the environment. (http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/abstracts/abstract.asp?L=D&PROJ=P20199)

Diagnose von Förderanlagen

Als Anwendungs- und Testobjekt soll ein Multi-Media-Replayer für Mobile Endgeräte entwickelt werden: Radio und TV Sendungen (aktuelle oder vor kurzem ausgestrahlte News, Interviews, Dokumentationen, Talkshows, Musiksendungen wie Starmania, ...) sind über eine Suche in den Wörtern, die von den Personen der Sendung ausgesprochen wurden oder im Titel der Sendung vorgekommen sind, auf einem Mobiltelefon abrufbar. Motto: Google für TV und Radio am Handy.

Ziel des Projektes ist es für die Zeitressourcenplanung in Dienstleistungsunternehmen, Modelle, Methoden und Softwarewerkzeuge zu entwickeln, die es erlauben aufbauend auf Standardbausteinen einfach an die jeweilige Situation angepasste Werkzeuge zu entwickeln; bei der Weiterentwicklung der Standardbausteine sicherzustellen, dass diese Adaptionen mitgepflegt werden, um eine neuerliche Anpassung überflüssig zu machen; auf die jeweils adaptierten Bausteine handlungsrelevant Wissen für die Planer zur Verfügung stellen, um auch komplexe Planungsaufgaben auch praktisch bewältigbar zu machen.

Zentrales Thema dieser gemeinsamen Forschung ist die Untersuchung grundlegender Datenstrukturen aus dem Bereich der rechnerischen Geometrie (Computational Geometry), einem relativ jungen Teilgebiet der (theoretischen) Informatik. Dabei sollen sowohl theoretische Aspekte untersucht werden, als auch deren konkrete Umsetzung im Rahmen einer allgemein verwendbaren Programmbibliothek. Auf Seite der theoretischen Untersuchungen sollen sowohl klassische Datenstrukturen, wie Voronoi-Diagramme oder Triangulierungen, aber auch relativ neue Datenstrukturen, wie Pseudo-Triangulierungen oder Straight-Skeletons, untersucht werden. Genauere Einzelheiten werden in den nachfolgenden Abschnitten beschrieben. Gleichzeitig soll aber auch für alle untersuchten Strukturen deren tatsächliche Verwendbarkeit in der Praxis berücksichtigt werden. So ist es geplant, jeweils spezielle Aspekte dieser Strukturen in konkreten Implementationen umzusetzen. Um einen bestmöglichen Nutzen der erzielten Ergebnisse zu gewährleisten, sollen die Implementationen in einer standardisierten Bibliothek der gesamten CG-Community zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Dazu ist die Umsetzung in CGAL (Computational Geometry Algorithms Library, siehe { www.cgal.org}) geplant. Es handelt sich dabei um ein ursprünglich von der EU gefördertes Projekt, das insbesondere von unserem französichen Projektpartner an zentraler Stelle mitbetrieben wird.

follows

Project for coordination, planning, reporting all reference projects in SoftNet Austria K-Ind-network

Analyse bestehender Softwarearchitekturen hinsichtlich Sicherheit und Erweiterbarkeit Bereitstellung von Verfahrensmodellen und Softwarearchitekturen für den Bereich Mobiltelephonie Analyse zukünftiger Entwicklung im Bereich Next Generation Intelligent Networks Bereitstellung von Methoden und Tools zur Sicherung der Softwarequalität unter Berücksichtigung der Applikationsdomänen Mobile IP, Multimedia, Web und Mobiltelephonie Testumgebungen Verifikationstechniken Last- und Zuverlässigkeitstests Analyse von Sicherheitsaspekten

Eine wesentliche Herausforderung bei der Entwicklung von Standardsoftware ist die Erreichung einer bestimmten Softwarequalität. Dazu wird das (vermeintlich) fertige Softwareprodukt getestet, wobei versucht werden muss, eine möglichst vollständige Überdeckung der Funktionalitäten durch Testfälle zu erreichen. Dadurch können bei komplexen Softwaresystemen (wie der von Hyperwave) mehrere tausend Testfälle entstehen. Die Organisation dieser Tests, der daraus resultierenden Fehlerbehebungen und neuerlichen Tests der betroffenen Funktionen stellt daher eine Herausforderung dar.

Using sources from the internet and semantic data provided by user communities in Web2.0 style, a system that can intelligently extract information for user needs will be analyzed, designed and a prototype implemented

The Self Properties in Automomous Systems project (SEPIAS) focusses on the development process of mobile systems which comprises hardware and software. The goal is to provide tools and techniques for enabling the mobile systems to react to environmental changes and internal faults in an intelligent way such that they can still fulfil their tasks. Because of limited possibilities for human intervention and even interaction during operation autonomous systems need to solve the problems and unexpected situations by their own. As a consequence, the autonomous system has to have knowledge about the surrounding environment, its task, and itself. Moreover, the system has to be able to reason about its state and if necessary to draw conclusions which even have an effect on its structure and behaviour. For the capabilities of reflection and self-healing capabilities the required knowledge has to be accessible by the system development of hardware and software of a system for a specific task. Although malfunctions are considered partially within the process, the resulting system has no explicit knowledge about itself. To overcome this situation, there has to be a knowledge acquisition phase during the development process which integrates smoothly within a traditional development process. For the purpose of knowledge representation and reasoning this project uses the techniques that are used in model-based reasoning. They have to be adapted and smoothly integrated. An additional requirement is the available computational power of autonomous systems since reflection has to be performed during operation. Hence, the algorithms and knowledge representation have to be adapted to perform well under given computational restrictions.

The aim of this project is to integrate runtime diagnosis of hardware and software of autonomous robot systems in a unified way. For this, a common model needs to be developed on which to apply model-based diagnosis techniques. Autonomous mobile robots represent a particularly well suited application for diagnosis tasks. Their autonomous nature implies that they need to reason about their state as there might not always be a supervising human operator. A robot should at all times aim to maintain functionality or try to retain as much system functionality as possible. Repair actions might lead to a fully functioning state after a fault has been diagnosed. Reconfiguration might retain functionality to a certain degree. In the worst case, the robot might reconfigure itself to switch to a fail-safe mode to avoid further damage or threats to nearby people. For example, diagnosis that the vision sensor is malfunctioning could lead to a reconfiguration where other sensors, e.g., a laser range scanner, are used. This might also require to use a different mode of operation, i.e., software reconfiguration. If, however, the video device driver causes problems while the actual video device is still fully functioning, a restart of the video device driver and all dependand services might be a sufficient repair action to restore normal behaviour. As can be seen from this example hardware and software are tightly coupled and need to be modeled together. In this project the feasibility of a unified diagnosis approach is to be evaluated. The modular robotic platform created at Graz Technical University will serve as a test-platform for case-studies on modelling hardware, software, interfaces between hardware and software and interfaces between the abstract control and diagnosis layers. These robots are used for office delivery tasks and robotic soccer, and will serve as target for a case-study. Diagnosis on these models is to be integrated with repair and reconfiguration.

Industrial Geometry - An emerging research area

Industrial geometry is based on computational techniques which originated in various areas of applied geometry. To give a few examples, the methods of Computer Aided Geometric Design form the mathematical foundation of the powerful CAD technologies available today. Computer Vision provides methods for inspecting and analyzing images and videos. Image processing is used to reconstruct geometric features from digital image data, such as X-ray or computer tomography images. Computational Geometry provides efficient algorithms for solving fundamental geometrical problems. Robot kinematics deals with geometric problems which occur in connection with robot mechanical systems.

In recent years, these different areas of research have started to become increasingly interconnected, and begun even to merge. A driving force in this process is the increasing complexity of applications, where one field of research alone would be insufficient to achieve useful results. Novel technologies for acquisition and processing of data lead to new and increasingly challenging problems, whose solution requires the combination of techniques from different branches of applied geometry.

Besides Subproject S09201: Coordination and Service, Knowledge transfer and sustainability, TU Graz hosts the following subprojects

Subproject S09205 (Computational Geometry)

(Principal Investigator: Oswin Aichholzer) Computational Geometry is dedicated to the algorithmic study of elementary geometric questions. Traditionally it deals with basic geometric objects like points, lines, and planes. For real world applications, however, often reliable techniques for advanced geometric primitives like surfaces and location query structures are needed.

The role of this project is twofold. On one hand it will provide the theoretical background for advanced geometric algorithms and data structures for several other projects within this joint research project (JRP). These include geometric structures for fast information retrieval, the generation and manipulation of triangular meshes, the computation of suitable distance functions to multidimensional objects, and the representation of advanced geometric objects.

Another aim of this project is to develop novel techniques for the manipulation and optimization of geometric structures. Here the emphasis is on geometric graphs (triangulation-like and Voronoi diagram-like structures, spanning trees). Properties of these structures will be investigated, with the goal of designing more efficient geometric algorithms and data structures.

Existing geometric algorithms libraries (CGAL, LEDA) will be used to guarantee robustness of the developed algorithms.

Subproject S09209 (Computational Differential Geometry)

(Principal investigator: Johannes Wallner) Computational Differential Geometry means methods of both numerical and discrete mathematics with the purpose of investigating and modeling curves and surfaces. The main theme of this research project is the robust analysis of differential properties of surfaces, the creation of discrete and semi-discrete models of freeform surfaces, and the study of geometric properties of such models. It is only recently that the wealth of interesting geometry connected to applications in, say, architecture, has come to the attention of mathematicians, and presumably only a small part of it has been investigated. We are investigating topics of Discrete Differential Geometry: discrete curvatures based on parallel meshes, quad-based and hex-based discrete surfaces, Christoffel duality, and others. New lines of research of semi-discrete surfaces and inverse problems in connection with integral invariants.

The development of safety-critical distributed embedded systems requires adequate testing methods to ensure a low failure rate of the system. Within this project it is the goal to develop a testing framework for safety-critical distributed embedded systems that may have both, event-triggered and time-triggered behavior. As the primary application domain of this framework is the automotive industry, the framework will support the V-model for software development. To ensure a sufficient quality of the generated test data, a correlation between the safety-requirements for the safety-integrity levels (SIL) of the standard IEC 65108 and adequate test suites has to be defined. The testing framework should generate the test cases automatically. Therefore, a formal specification of the application is required. Finding an adequate formal specification language that matches the required expressiveness for the intended application domain will be an important prerequisite for the development of the test case generation techniques. Since this testing framework is targeted to real time embedded systems the underlying formal techniques for test case generation will support a precise notion of time in the application model. The testing framework will support multiple test techniques to provide efficient techniques for different abstraction levels.

Erstellung von prototypischer Software, die für die Erfüllung der Machbarkeitsstudie notwendig ist. Durchführung praktischer Tests der Software basierend auf bereitgestellter Hardware. Spezifikation von Sensoren

Erstellung von prototypischer Software, die für die Erfüllung der Machbarkeitsstudie notwendig ist. Durchführung praktischer Tests der Software basierend auf bereitgestellter Hardware. Spezifikation von Sensoren

Ontology Engineering in the Context of Data Extraction In this part studies and research on approaches to ontology engineering are investigated to generate a basic framework that is designed for further reuse. Ontology-based Intelligent Extraction New methods for data extraction from non-HTML documents, in particular on non-structured formats, are studied. The research is mainly conducted on two formats, namely PDF and plain text, the latter mainly in the context of 3270 applications. Novel Semantic Technologies in Wrapping In this part the main goal is to map data instances that have been extracted from e.g. HTML documents to ontologies such as RDF-Schema or OWL. The declarative logic-based language Elog of the Visual Wrapper is ideally suited for tight integration with ontology repositories. Existing RDF repositories like Jena, Sesame and KAON and various existing RDF query languages are analyzed, and the APIs of the libraries are studied to explore ways how to connect the Lixto Visual Wrapper to these repositories. Wrapper Adaptation In this part the goal is to study automatic and semi-automatic repair technologies that change a wrapper accordingly to major structural changes on the underlying Web sites. Human-Machine Communication: htmlButler htmlButler is intended to be a commodity client server based tool through which general web users can visually specify to be informed via Email about changes in a certain area of interest on a Web page.

The VoIP project deals with improving the software quality for commercial products in the area of the telecommunication industry. In particular, the project focuses on fault detection in VoIP server software comprising concurrent programming language constructs. An important objective is to provide tools and techniques for analyzing the software and to prevent bugs related to concurrency like data races and deadlocks.

In this project we explore new extraction in fault detection and localization of java programs. In particular we discover the modificaition of verification techniques of ASPECT to localize fault. Prototype implementation and experimental evaluation should be available at the end of the project.

Multimedia data has a rich and complex structure in terms of inter- and intra-document references and can be an extremely valuable source of information. However, this potential is severely limited until and unless effective methods for semantic extraction and semantic-based cross-media exploration and retrieval can be devised. Today’s leading-edge techniques in this area are working well for low-level feature extraction (e.g. colour histograms), are focussing on narrow aspects of isolated collections of multimedia data, and are dealing only with single media types. MISTRAL follows the following lines of radically new research: MISTRAL will extract a large variety of semantically relevant metadata from one media type and integrate it closely with semantic concepts derived from other media types. Eventually, the results from this cross-media semantic integration will also be fed back to the semantic extraction processes of the different media types so as to enhance the quality of the results of these processes. MISTRAL will focus on most innovative, semantic-based cross-media exploration and retrieval techniques employing concepts at different semantic levels. MISTRAL addresses the specifics of multimedia data in the global, networked context employing semantic web technologies. The MISTRAL results for semantic-based multimedia retrieval will contribute to a significant improvement of today’s human-computer interaction in multimedia retrieval applications.

The goal of the PROSYD project is to significantly increase the competitiveness and efficiency of the European IT industry through the establishment of a standard, integrated property-based paradigm for the design of electronic systems. This paradigm will integrate and unify the many phases of system development, including requirement definition, design, implementation, and verification, into one coherent design flow, building on the emerging standard property specification language PSL/Sugar, which has been recently selected as a basis for an IEEE standard. The new paradigm will enable the development of electronic systems of higher quality within shorter design cycles and with lower costs. The prime deliverable of the PROSYD project will be a reference methodology and a set of coherent PSL/Sugar-based tools for property-based system design. Using these tools, we aim to demonstrate an improvement of at least 30% in design productivity. In addition, we expect to see an increase in the quality of the finished product, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of design flaws that make it through the verification phase.

The project JADE Extensions (JADE-X) project aims at developing an intelligent debugging environment that improves the software engineering process by providing assistance in locating and (if possible) correcting bugs in Java programs. Considering the size and complexity of recent computer programs, this is generally a very expensive and time-consuming task. Therefore, research has developed several approaches that deal with debugging and verification of computer programs, each of them using proprietary methodologies and requiring different amount of knowledge. Unlike those approaches, our approach does not deal with formal verification of programs, the debugging tool to be developed during JADE-X adapts model-based diagnosis (MBD) for debugging. MBD has been developed for finding and fixing faults in hardware and is based on a componentoriented model of the system describing its functionality. This approach can also be used for software debugging. In this domain, the components are constructed from various elements of the program, such as statements or expressions. The connections are derived from the used and modified variables. However, it is not easy to develop a general model that can be used to locate different kinds of faults efficiently, as the model influences e.g. the number of bug candidates. Hence, the development of suitable models for program debugging depends on multiple aspects and has to be investigated carefully. JADE-X is based on the results obtained during the previous project (JADE) and extends the results in order to provide better results. Multiple models representing different abstractions of programs are to be developed in order to provide better results for different kinds of faults without an increased amount of user interaction. Combinations of such models are expected to considerably enhance the debugging process, as a reduction in bug candidates, diagnosis time and user interaction can be achieved. Project JADE-X is expected to deliver multiple models of Java programs (including object-oriented features), knowledge about when to apply which models, an improvement of available diagnosis algorithms and an empirical evaluation of the results using a collection of realworld examples. Finally, a debugging tool for Java programs is to be implemented that includes multiple models, diagnosis algorithms and mechanisms to express the desired behavior of a program.

Effort and cost estimations are the basis for project management to calculate the costs of software projects in order to create a budget offer long before the project's realization starts. At this time details about the project are rarely good enough for correct estimations. The basic requirement for a good estimation is the knowledge of the cost driving factors within the software development cycle. The outcome of an analysis regarding the cost driving factors are the expected demands for an effort estimation. A recalculation of project effort estimations using data from previous projects can provide pros and cons of current estimation procedures. In my thesis I work in this direction. For this purpose data from the LOGIM GesmbH company were taken. Function Point methods like IFPUG, Mark II and Full Function Points were tested. Furthermore, the Object Point and the COCOMO II method were analyzed with respect to the available data. This data comprises time recordings and source lines of code for various projects and thus yield to a comparison of the different methods with respect to their ability of computing good cost estimations. The analysis in my work leads to the main conclusion that the used method itself does not have an huge influence of the quality of estimation. More important is the handling of the chosen method which can be ensured by using clear definitions, a well educated personal, pre-adjusted parameters, and influence factors.

The Robot Soccer World Cup (known as the RoboCup) Games and Conferences are a series of competitions and events designed to promote the full integration of AI and robotics research. Robotic soccer provides a good test-bed for evaluation of various research, e.g. artificial intelligence, robotics, image processing, system engineering and multi-agent systems. In the Middle Size League (MSL) teams of fully autonomous robots with a size of up to 50cm x 50cm x 80 cm play soccer against each other. The MSL provides a serious challenge for many research disciplines including multi-robot cooperative teams, autonomous navigation, sensor fusion, vision-based perception, automatic reasoning, and mechanical design, to name only a few. All these topics have to be tackled in order to solve the RoboCup challenge. Therefore, RoboCup needs truly interdisciplinary research. Furthermore, approaches developed in the MSL will find their way to applications in other domains like service robots. As mentioned above research in the field of autonomous mobile robots is a very interdisciplinary and wide area. Therefore, hardly any group is able to achieve high quality research in all topics. Our group concentrates its work on flexible, symbol-based and robust approaches for the control of autonomous mobile robots in a wide area of domains and for various tasks. We subsume this under the name "Robust Intelligent Control for Autonomous Systems". The main research topics of our group are: robust abstarct control for mobile robots, model-based diagnosis for autonomous systems and sensor-based navigation.

The DEV Project aims at supporting and automating software debugging of VHDL programs, i.e., locating and (if possible) correcting bugs. The debugging tool to be developed during DEV adapts model-based diagnosis (MBD) for debugging. Project DEV should be a next step in providing models of VHDL programs in order to make the application of MBD to debugging more application oriented. During DEV the development of logical models of VHDL programs considering practical requirements regarding debugging time, the user interface, and coupling debugging with simulation and verification tools, is a main issue. Project DEV is expected to deliver multiple models of programs, means for allowing to handle those models, an empirically evaluation of the obtained results using real-world VHDL programs, an improvement of available diagnosis algorithms, and finally, the foundations of using a planning system for controlling and optimizing the whole debugging process.

Network of Excellence in Model Based Systems and Qualitative Reasoning (MONET 2)

SEAL is a research project which was started in January 1998 at the Institute for Software Technology of the Technical University Graz, Austria. The goal of the project is to design and implement an interactive teaching and learning environment to be used as a tool in computing lectures. The main focus is not primarily the software as a product. The main target lies in research activities at the very edge of computer supported learning environments. The project is thematically bound to the support of teaching and learning computing, i.e. the teaching of methods and principles of programming and software engineering.

The ISAC-project is a research and development project at the Institute for Software Technology of the Graz University of Technology. The ISAC-system establishes new base-technology for a novel kind of interactive and web-based transparent software for applied mathematics. The novelty is given by the human-readable knowledge base including Isabelles HOL-theories and by the transparently working knowledge interpreter (a generalization of 'single stepping' algebra systems). Research within the ISAC-project goes alongside the development of the ISAC-system and concerns issues, which reach from technological ones like 'math on the (semantic) web' down to foundamental ones like a 'rigorous formal semantics of tools for applied mathematcs'. The background to both, development and research, is given by actual needs in math education as well as by foundamental questions about 'the mechanization of thinking' as an essential aspect in mathematics and in technology. The ISAC-system under construction comprises a tutoring-system and an authoring-system. The latter provides for adaption to various needs of individual users and educational institutions and for extensions to arbitrary fields of applied mathematics.