Robots set to learn how to provide better assistance during surgery

Minimally invasive surgery has many advantages for patients and surgical teams, such as shorter recovery times, lower post-operative complication rates, higher patient acceptance rates and increased cost efficiency. One key area here is interventional radiology, where external imaging equipment is used to guide the surgical instruments through the body. Robots can support in this task. However, those who believe that robots “operate” independently are (as yet) mistaken: The robot systems available today are pure tele-operators or mere assistants for holding and targeting tools; that’s all they can do. Now, a research project led by the University of Klagenfurt wants to explore additional advantages of “operating robots” and increase their autonomy when it comes to supporting surgeons. Read more →

Doctoral degree (PhD) for Konstantin Posch

On September 8, 2020 Konstantin Posch successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Regularization of Statistical Models with a Focus on Bayesian Methods”.

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.