Many routes lead to an overview image: Path planning for drone swarms

A forest is ablaze: Before the fire service can even commence fire-fighting operations, an overview is required. This could be an opportunity for the deployment of drone swarms, dispatched to survey the affected area from the air and to take photos. But how do the drones know which paths they should ideally survey? Jürgen Scherer is working on improving the process of path planning for drone swarms.

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Prof. Bruno Buchberger visits “Algebraic Methods for Discrete Optimization” (taught by Visiting Fulbright Professor Susan Margulies)

The distinguished mathematician Bruno Buchberger was a key note speaker in the workshop “Mind, Culture and Behavior in the Digital Age” conducted in Klagenfurt last week. Despite his busy schedule, he accepted Susan Margulies’ invitation to attend the last day of her class, and listen to the students present their final projects.

Groebner Bases (discovered by Buchberger, but named after his thesis advisor Wolfgang Groebner) and Buchberger’s Algorithm were principal topics in the course “Algebraic Methods for Discrete Optimization”. The final student presentations included topics such as “Improvements to Buchberger’s Algorithm”, “Set Cover and Groebner Bases”, “Hamiltonian Cycle and Groebner bases”, and “A Bridge between the Ideal World and the SDP World”.

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New Book Publication by Alexa Weik von Mossner

Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative

by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alexa Weik von Mossner

How do we experience the virtual environments we encounter in literature and film on the sensory and emotional level? How do environmental narratives invite us to care for human and nonhuman others who are put at risk? And how do we feel about the speculative futures presented to us in ecotopian and ecodystopian texts? Alexa Weik von Mossner explores these central questions that are important to anyone with an interest in the emotional appeal and persuasive power of environmental narratives.

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Efficient and intelligent: Drones get to grips with planning the delivery of goods


When goods are needed urgently, for instance, in rural areas poorly served by transport infrastructure, or in large, heavily congested cities, they could be delivered by drones. In 2013, Amazon was one of the first to declare the intention to work towards the automated delivery of goods by small autonomous helicopters. A multi-disciplinary research team at the Alpen-Adria-Universität assembled by Christian Bettstetter and Friederike Wall is due to deliver initial insights on the efficient operation of (self-organised) delivery of goods. Doctoral student Pasquale Grippa will present the results at the conference “Robotics: Science and Systems”, which is scheduled to take place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from July 12th.

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