Research Projects

Current Projects

• Shared Charging - Ecosystem for Sustainable Shared EV Charging (2025-2028)
• City Science Lab - Climate & Cities Missions in Action (2025-2027)
• GameWise - Fostering Wisdom Through Video Games (2024-2027)

Selected Past Projects

• Swarm Intelligence Layer to Control Autonomous Agents (SWILT)
• Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSwarm)
• ICT solutions for energy saving in smart homes (MONERGY)
• Smart Microgrid Lab
• Time-Triggered Communication Architecture for an Autonomous Mobile Robot System (TTCAR)
• Design Methods for Self-Organizing Systems (DEMESOS/MESON)

Shared Charging - Ecosystem for Sustainable Shared EV Charging

Duration: January 2025 - December 2028
Funding: Climate and Energy Fund, Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), €9 million
Consortium: 12 partners from industry and research, led by go-e GmbH

As electric vehicles become mainstream, the challenge is clear: most EVs spend the majority of their time parked at offices, residential buildings, and public areas that lack adequate charging infrastructure. Grid limitations, hardware costs, space constraints, and installation complexity make expansion slow and expensive. Current public and private charging technologies can provide less than 44% of the required charging power for a fully electrified vehicle fleet, while only around 20% of future BEV drivers have access to private parking spaces with wallbox charging capabilities.

The Shared Charging project addresses these challenges by developing and testing a next-generation ecosystem for smart, semi-public EV charging infrastructure. The project creates modular power distribution systems that integrate renewable energy sources and operate within existing grid limitations. At its core is an intelligent charging system that dynamically balances energy supply and demand right where vehicles are parked, using smart algorithms to optimize charging based on renewable energy availability - whether from solar panels during sunshine hours or wind turbines during windy periods.

The project encompasses the complete innovation cycle: concept development and assessment, technology development for integrated charging ecosystems, deployment of demonstrator prototypes in real-world urban workplace settings, and development of sustainable business models for large-scale adoption. A key innovation is bidirectional charging, allowing electric vehicles to not only consume electricity but also feed it back into the grid, helping to smooth peak loads and optimize renewable energy utilization. The research demonstrates that preventing grid blackouts in an 80% electric vehicle scenario doesn't require massive infrastructure investments - just coordination, intelligence, and efficient use of resources.

→ Project Information

City Science Lab (AAU) - Climate & Cities Missions in Action

Duration: January 2025 - January 2027
Funding: Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), €1+ million
Collaborators: Alexandra Schwell, Daniel Barben, Erich Schwarz, Franz Rauch, Helen Landmann, Martina Merz, Max-Peter Menzel, Wilfried Elmenreich (all AAU)

Klagenfurt am Wörthersee is the only Austrian city participating in the ambitious EU Mission "100 Climate-neutral and Smart Cities by 2030" and has been awarded the prestigious EU Mission Label. To achieve climate neutrality, the city is implementing and planning ambitious projects ranging from decarbonizing the bus fleet to expanding renewable energy supply. The City Science Lab serves as the university's hub for supporting this transformation through interdisciplinary research and engagement.

The CSL-AAU functions as a bridge between university research and urban society, coordinating and bundling mission-oriented activities across four faculties and seven institutes. The lab brings together expertise from social sciences, cultural studies, economics, and technical sciences to address the multifaceted challenges of climate neutrality. Research areas span energy supply and mobility, settlement and infrastructure development, participatory processes with stakeholders, sustainability communication, and development of sustainable business models.

The lab is guided by critical questions for successful climate mission implementation: How can Klagenfurt achieve climate goals in a way that equally considers ecological, economic, and social aspects? How do we communicate the urgency of climate targets while addressing competing priorities and needs? How can we ensure a "Just Transition" where no one is left behind? The interdisciplinary team investigates how technical, economic, social, cultural, and political aspects interconnect, creating opportunities for holistic solutions.

Key achievements include establishing cooperation agreements with municipal utilities (Stadtwerke Klagenfurt) focusing on circular economy and improved energy forecasting, supporting the city's candidacy for the European Green Capital Award, and developing culturally-informed approaches to climate justice by comparing Klagenfurt's path with other European cities like Warsaw and Ljubljana.

→ City Science Lab Website

GameWise - Fostering Wisdom Through Video Games

Duration: October 2024 - September 2027
Funding: Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Project PAT5427723
Principal Investigator: Prof. Judith Glück (Department of Psychology, AAU)
Collaboration: Interdisciplinary team from Psychology and Game Studies & Engineering

In a world that urgently needs more wisdom to address complex global challenges, video games may offer an innovative approach to fostering wisdom in broad and diverse audiences. While video games have been proven to increase various cognitive and social competencies, wisdom is typically acquired through reflection on real-life challenges and experiences. The GameWise project explores whether the emotionally intense and personally meaningful experiences offered by certain video games can contribute to developing wisdom-related abilities that transfer to real life.

Current education systems focus primarily on knowledge transmission and analytical thinking, but aspects of wise problem-solving - such as dealing with difficult conflicts, making complex moral decisions, or taking multiple perspectives - often receive less attention. Many contemporary "deep" video games immerse players in challenging life situations and decisions that extend far beyond their personal experiences, allowing them to adopt previously unknown perspectives and reflect on existential questions.

The research investigates whether people can gain wisdom-relevant insights and skills through video games and apply them in real life. Studies show that wisdom is best enhanced through interventions that are contextualized, emotionally intense, and personally meaningful - characteristics that certain video games possess. The project consists of two complementary research tracks: one examining short-term activation of wisdom characteristics (self-reflection, empathy, openness) through compact video games, and another investigating long-term effects of extended gameplay that encourages reflection on life themes and existential issues.

Two doctoral students are conducting this research, with pilot studies already showing that many people report gaining life insights and developing personal growth through video game experiences. The project aims to establish a scientific foundation for understanding how virtual experiences can contribute to real-world wisdom development.

SWILT - Swarm Intelligence Layer to Control Autonomous Agents

Duration: October 2018 - September 2021 (36 months)
Funding: Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), ~€1 million
Consortium: Lakeside Labs GmbH (coordinator), Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Infineon Technologies Austria AG, Novunex GmbH

The goal of SWILT was to perform agent-based swarm modelling of an industrial plant on the use cases of production scheduling and transportation in logistics. Since the problem sizes in these use cases are extremely large and traditional pre-calculated schedules or transportation tables are not sufficient, the innovation was to use swarm algorithms with reactive local rules on individual agents which are able to compensate dynamic changes in their local vicinity. The SWILT concept embedded the local swarm rules in a three-layered architecture: L1 - central management layer, L2 - swarm control layer, and L3 - autonomous agent layer. The project addressed several research questions, including choosing suitable algorithms to build up a library, intra- and inter-swarm communication (requirements to join and leave a swarm, data abstraction/fusion/aggregation between layers, requirements to produce a 5G network application), applying scenario-specific swarm intelligence algorithms, and extending swarm approaches with human-in-the-loop concepts. The project successfully demonstrated that swarm algorithms can improve production planning in semiconductor manufacturing by applying nature-inspired algorithms including artificial hormone systems, bee colony algorithms, and ant colony optimization.

CPSwarm - Swarms of Cyber-Physical Systems

Duration: January 2017 - December 2019 (36 months)
Funding: EU H2020, Grant Agreement 731946
Consortium: 9 partners from 6 European countries (coordinator: LINKS Foundation, Italy)

The CPSwarm project tackled the challenge of developing complex swarms of heterogeneous cyber-physical systems (CPS) by proposing a new science of system integration and supporting tools. The project defined a complete toolchain that enabled designers to: (a) set-up collaborative autonomous CPSs; (b) test the swarm performance with respect to the design goal; and (c) massively deploy solutions towards "reconfigurable" CPS devices. Model-centric design and predictive engineering were the pillars of the project, enabling definition, composition, verification and simulation of collaborative, autonomous CPS while accounting for various dynamics, constraints and for safety, performance and cost efficiency issues. The main outcome was the CPSwarm Workbench, a complete design and simulation environment supporting iterative, computer-aided, model-based design of CPS swarms. Project results were tested in real-world use cases in 3 different domains: swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles and rovers for safety and security purposes, autonomous driving for freight vehicles, and swarms of opportunistically collaborating smart bikes.

MONERGY - ICT solutions for energy saving in smart homes

Funding: INTERREG IV Italy-Austria, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), grant KWF 20214|23743|35470
Partners: Lakeside Labs GmbH (Austria), WiTiKee s.r.l. (Italy)

Increased energy efficiency and savings are fundamental goals to contribute to the Sustainable Growth specified by the "Europe 2020 strategy". A common thought is that energy saving is achievable by making consumers aware of the energy consumption of their household appliances. Most people don't even have an idea of how electricity is generated or how it gets into their homes. In this respect, a complete solution for monitoring and controlling the household appliances and devices is of great importance. MONERGY addressed these issues by carrying out fundamental research about home-automation and developing concrete solutions for increasing energy efficiency in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and Carinthian homes. The project focused on measuring public attitudes toward energy-efficient technologies, increasing public awareness, and developing innovative solutions that had an impact on reducing energy consumption in households across the Austria-Italy border region.

Smart Microgrid Lab

Funding: Lakeside Labs/Carinthian Economic Promotion Fund (KWF)
Principal Investigator: Wilfried Elmenreich

The Smart Microgrid Lab provided a hands-on laboratory for measurement and experimentation in a real microgrid environment at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. The lab featured power generation from photovoltaic panels, the capability to operate in both island mode and grid-connected mode, comprehensive measurement equipment, reference consumers, and energy storage based on batteries. The facility served as a training ground for engineers in the field, supporting multiple PhD students working on energy topics and complex systems, as well as master and bachelor students from Information Technology and Computer Science programs. The lab enabled research on topics including non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM), smart grid modeling and simulation, energy consumption forecasting, and self-organizing smart devices.

TTCAR - Time-Triggered Communication Architecture for an Autonomous Mobile Robot System

Funding: Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Project P18060-N04
Principal Investigator: Wilfried Elmenreich

The objective of this prestigious FWF project was to develop a generic communication system for mobile robots that supports the interconnection of a set of distributed sensors, actuators, data processing and control nodes. To achieve these goals, it was necessary to precisely define a communication architecture fulfilling requirements including: comprehensibility to support users and reduce human error, real-time communication for hard real-time sensor and actuator control, flexibility in implementation across different processors, support for computer-aided setup and configuration, and support for diagnosis and maintenance. The system was based upon a time-triggered architecture and implemented for the Tinyphoon robot platform as a case study. The project contributed fundamental research on time-triggered smart transducer networks, sensor fusion in time-triggered systems, and wireless time-triggered communication using bio-inspired clock synchronization approaches.

→ Project Webpage

Funding: European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Carinthian Economic Promotion Fund (KWF), grant KWF 20214|18128|26673 within Lakeside Labs
Partners: Lakeside Labs GmbH, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt
Principal Investigator: Wilfried Elmenreich

The behavior of a self-organizing system (SOS) is typically defined by the local interaction rules of the components. While this emergent behavior typically is very flexible, i.e., working at different scales being robust against disturbances and failures, there exists no straight-forward way for the design of these rules so that the overall system shows the desired properties. The try and error methods, even when being improved using notions such as the "friction" between two components often suffer from counter-intuitive interrelationships between local rules and emergent behavior. Imitation approaches, such as the bio-inspired methods or the programming of the local behavior by analyzing an example using perfect knowledge are limited to the cases where an appropriate example model is available.

The goal of these research activities was to investigate novel generic approaches for designing self-organizing systems and to elaborate basic concepts for a straightforward generic design process for creating self-organizing solutions, consisting of the stages modeling, simulation and iteration, validation, re-iteration or deployment. The work was conducted in two consecutive projects: DEMESOS (Design Methods for Self-Organizing Systems) and MESON (Modeling and Engineering of Self-Organizing Networks).

→ DEMESOS project page

→ Project publications (open access)