Autonomous robots to inspect and maintain ship hulls and storage tanks

Some 56,000 ships weighing in excess of 500 tons are currently sailing the world’s oceans. For now, their maintenance is carried out by a high number of personnel: The cleaning of a ship’s hull currently takes about eight days and costs between 100,000 and 200,000 euros. The project “BugWright2 Autonomous Robotic Inspection and Maintenance on Ship Hulls and Storage Tanks” financed by EU-HORIZON2020 aims at developing autonomous technical solutions.

The man who calculates the future

Under which conditions can mathematics be used to calculate how many and which animals will live where, how viruses will spread, and how strong our economic performance will be tomorrow? Christian Aarset has developed mathematical models that allow us to calculate the future. He recently completed his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Christian Pötzsche.

Processing large amounts of data efficiently: Creating new technologies for the computing continuum

“We can provide the scientific community and industry with the infrastructure they need to calculate large amounts of data quickly”, Dragi Kimovski, Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Technology, explains. In a recent conversation he told us what scientists and experts like him can offer the fields of medicine and physics as well as other areas.

Navigating with the eyes of a camera: How can helicopters navigate on Mars?

Machines usually use navigation systems such as GPS to locate themselves in outdoor areas. However, other planets do not have such a system yet. Thus, different methods need to be found to use helicopters for the exploration of another planet. In Austria, a team at the University of Klagenfurt is researching the question, “How can a robot navigate and localize itself without GPS”. The project AMAZE aims to answer this question. Read more →