15 March 2023
A DIREC project led by researchers from the IT University and the University of Southern Denmark shows that a series of efforts have provided a wider recruitment field in the computer science studies and reduced dropout rates.
Read more (in Danish)
22 February 2023
How do we create future technologies and at the same time maintain a critical approach to the many new possibilities? A workshop on speculative design challenged the PhD students to take a critical look at the downside of technology.
Speculative design is the name of a relatively new method and independent research approach, which questions the basic assumptions of technology research: that technology is good by definition, that it changes people’s lives for the better and solves the world’s problems.
Read more (in Danish)
Confronting Data Co-lab is a collaboration between researchers from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen.
The goal of the interdisciplinary group is to focus sharply on the influence of data-driven technological directions our society is leaning towards – and whether it they are in line with shared societal values.
In their work, the researchers include experiences, skills and perspectives from citizens, society and industry in order to see digital technologies in a larger context.
20 February 2023
The reuse of robot data would make it much easier to improve existing or set up new robot solutions. This was the aim of the completed ReRoPro project led by Norbert Krüger, who is a Professor at the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute at the University of Southern Denmark and part of SDU Robotics.
Photo: SDU
A robot database could save time and money and would also allow for smaller-scale productions to use robots. Although it sounds simple, unfortunately, it is everything but simple.
ReRoPro was a collaborative project between the University of Southern Denmark, University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University with the companies Rockwool, Novo Nordisk, Nordbo Robotics and WellTec as partners aiming to establish a robot database. Now the first and exploratory phase of the project is over, and the researchers are applying for funding to continue their work.
Benefits of using data from previous robot solutions
The project focused on reusing robot data to improve production processes but also on finding new robot solutions in a shorter time. That is a big problem for small and medium-sized enterprises: It takes a lot of time to establish an assembly solution. You usually need to start from scratch. But if you could make efficient use of data from earlier robot solutions, new solutions could be set up faster and cheaper. The problem, however, is that these data are in the head of people. They are not digitalized. Until now.
The idea is that when you want to automate a certain task you can type in some keywords, and the information from earlier similar productions is displayed to you. Right now, there are no established structures for the reuse of data within robotics, not even within companies.
To a large degree, that is because robot data are complex. In other fields such as computer vision, big databases and neural networks are very successful, because the data are homogenous. They consist of images, for instance. But within robotics you have all sorts of different data such as images, trajectories, force vectors, information on different materials, CAD-files and so on.
Challenges
But this is only one of the challenges. You also need to make an interface that is intuitive so that it is easy to sort out the information you need from the information you do not need. Another challenge is how to reuse data for your specific task once you have the right data. There is no standardized way of organizing data.
Yet another challenge is that companies do not really want to share their robot data in a huge database to which other companies and competitors have access. It is kind of contradictory. On the one hand, the more data that is available in the database, the more powerful it would be and the more use of it companies would have. But, on the other hand, it is valuable and sensitive knowledge for the companies and obviously, companies are reluctant to make that accessible.
Possible solutions
There are different ways to go. A solution could be to develop a database structure that can be used by companies to reuse data within their own organization. Alternatively, you could make a system where the sensitive details are hidden, but where the data are still valuable for others.
In the ReRoPro project the problem has been analyzed in four use cases provided by the involved companies and by means of an international workshop with experts from industry and academia.
Next step
The involved partners have gained a much better understanding of the problem. Next step will be to apply for funding for establishing software structures that allow for the reuse of data.
20 january 2023
How do we create a Danish community of computer scientists who can develop future software for quantum technologies? This was the subject of a workshop where 40 leading researchers were recently gathered at Technical University of Denmark.
Massive investments are made in quantum technology, and major technological advances have been achieved in recent years. Although there is probably still a long way to go before an actual quantum computer will be faster than classical computers for anything other than very special calculations, digitization and computer science can already now benefit the development in many areas.
19 january 2023
Researchers from Aalborg University, together with Rambøll, have developed a tool which contributes to a better overview of CO2 emissions on the road network.
Soon, the municipalities in Denmark will get a new tool that can contribute to reach the goal of a 70 per cent reduction of CO2 emissions by 2030.
22 DECEMBER 2022
Aarhus University and the Alexandra Institute have been granted DKK 1.8 million by Digital Research Centre Denmark (DIREC) to investigate safe software and protocols for voting and blockchain governance. The Concordium Blockchain is the industry partner in this project.
There is constant interest for internet voting by election commissions around the world. At the same time, there is a need for such internet voting for blockchain governance. However, building such voting systems is hard: the design of cryptographic protocols and their implementation are error prone. Switzerland, which is leading in internet voting, now mandates very high standards for such protocols: it requires cryptographic proofs of security.
Only a very select group of blockchain projects already develops protocols in such a rigorous way. One of them, Concordium, has already deployed such secure cryptographic protocols. They were designed at COBRA, the Concordium Blockchain Research Center at Aarhus University. Thus, the project aims to build on this experience and advance the state of the art in high assurance cryptographic software, especially for internet voting systems and blockchain governance.
DIREC, a collaboration between the computer science departments of eight Danish universities and the Alexandra Institute, has just granted the group DKK 1.8 million for the project: Verified Voting Protocols and Blockchains. The Concordium Blockchain is the industry partner in this project.
Bas Spitters, Associate Professor at Aarhus University and lead of the Concordium Blockchain Research Center at Aarhus University (CoBRA), is leading the project. He is internationally recognized for his research in the verification of blockchain technologies and sees great potential for the project:
“All electronic voting protocols use some kind of bulletin board. Blockchains are secure bulletin boards. They are already used in minor elections to ensure that voters can check that their votes have been registered correctly. In this project, we will explore whether it can also be used in larger elections. In particular, we aim to verify that the protocols used to verify the votes are private and secure.”
Kåre Kjelstrøm, CTO at Concordium, says: “There are of course many advantages in an online election, however distrust and a lack of regulation-ready and secure solutions have prevented most countries from moving forward. From Concordium, a science-based decentralized blockchain with the identity at the protocol level, we are eager to participate and solve the potential problems in building online elections on our chain. Concordium plans to design a voting scheme to be used for decentralized governance of the blockchain. The voting scheme will allow members of the community to vote on proposed features and to elect members of the Governance Committee.”
Gert Læssøe Mikkelsen, Head of Security Lab, Alexandra Institute says: “This project provides a good opportunity for testing novel technologies in solutions for critical digital infrastructure where very high security is required. We will test and participate in the implementation of the solutions developed in the project, and we want to let more industries benefit from the experiences of working with blockchain, digital identity and high security, e.g., public utilities and the finance sector”.
Finally, the project will collaborate with another DIREC project called Trust Through Software Independence and Program Verification lead by Carsten Schürmann from ITU on the further development of tools for ensuring the quality of voting protocols and their implementation.
20 DECEMBER 2022
Artificial intelligence can prevent costly production breakdowns and predict exactly when a robotic system requires service and maintenance. The technology is expected to save billions in lost production and general service costs for industrial companies.
Each year, global companies lose billions in operational disruptions and production stoppages as a result of routine maintenance of robotic systems.
7 December 2022
A group of researchers from the IT University will – in collaboration with the Greenlandic authorities – investigate how an internet election will affect the voters’ confidence in the electoral process. DIREC has granted the group 1.8 million DKK for the project.
In a time where we can deal with many things online, it may seem strange that voters in the vast majority of the world’s democracies still have to cast their votes by physically attending a polling station. The reason for this is that it is extremely difficult to ensure that everything takes place according to the democratic regulations when an election is held online. For example, it is difficult to maintain the secrecy of the vote, just as there is a fear of giving hackers an increased opportunity of altering the votes.
Having said that, there are of a lot of arguments in favour of internet elections, not least in Greenland, where the enormous distances, for example, can make it difficult to reach everyone with physical ballots in time. And this is exactly one of the reasons why a change in the law in 2020 paved the way for the Greenlandic government to give Greenlanders the opportunity to cast their vote online in the future. Greenland can thus become one of the few places in the world where the critized internet voting systems can be put into use.
A group of researchers from the IT University will now, in collaboration with the Greenlandic authorities, investigate how an internet election will affect the voters’ confidence in the electoral process. DIREC, which is partially financed by the Innovation Fund, has granted the group DKK 1.8 million for the project: Trust through Software Independence and Program Verification, which aims to investigate whether the technical software verifications in the internet election systems will increase trust among the voters.
– My goal is to give the Greenlandic decision-makers good conditions for deciding which system they should use to hold online elections. From a research point of view, the project can also be valuable. Technologically speaking, we are moving into unknown territory and depending on our results, you can easily imagine that the many, many countries that can see the benefits of an election will be able to use our results as well. And finally, Greenland – with its limited population and great distances – is an optimal place to start from, says professor at the IT University, Carsten Schürmann, who is Principal Investigator on the project.
Read more about the project Verified Voting Protocols and Blockchains.
10 OCTOBER 2022
Artificial intelligence must make drone swarms autonomous in order to use them as an effective tool for searches at sea. Drone swarms must also be able to respond fast in the event of floods and other natural disasters.
Researchers from SDU and AAU are currently collaborating with the Aalborg company Robotto and the Danish Emergency Management Agency to develop the autonomous drone swarms.
Robotto is already known from the Danish TV program “My idea – our mission”. Earlier this year, the company won the competition for best climate idea for the development of intelligent drones to help monitor large areas of land and fight wildfires before they get out of control.
Sees things which cannot be seen by the human eye
Together with researchers from University of Southern Denmark and Aalborg University led by Professor Anders Lyhne Christensen from SDU Biorobotics and Associate Professor, PhD Tim Merritt from the Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University, Robotto is now working on developing intelligent drones for use in search operations at sea. The drones will also be able to help rescuers searching for survivors and victims after floods and other natural disasters.
“We work with artificial intelligence and swarm drone technology. Our goal is to get many drones to cooperate so that they can coordinate a search operation over a large area with precision and autonomously. As the drones with artificial intelligence can see much more than the human eye, they are an important tool in future search and rescue efforts,” says Kenneth Richard Geipel, co-founder and CEO of Robotto.
Cheaper and more efficient
Drone swarms are both cheaper to operate and more efficient than rescue helicopters, he adds. The price for a drone is approx. DKK 100,000. In comparison, it costs DKK 16,000 per minute when a rescue helicopter takes off. “The advantage of artificial intelligence is that it can identify patterns and analyze images much more effectively than humans can. Therefore, a drone can search a very large area and look for people and objects in the sea that are impossible for humans to see.”
Must respond in the case of natural disasters
In the long term, the goal is to establish drone airports in strategic locations, so that the drones can quickly move out, for example after oil spills at sea, during floods and other natural disasters, and within very short time help the emergency services with the situation. “Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow we will still experience natural disasters like the floods in Pakistan and Florida. Therefore, it makes good sense to have mobile containers with small drones ready, so that they can respond fast in operations in high-risk areas,” says Kenneth Richard Geipel.
In the future, the drones will be able to work completely autonomously and be able to manage missions themselves, he adds. “Drones can already make decisions themselves depending on the situation, and when we get several drones to communicate, it will only require one person on the ground to press start. The drones will take care of the rest together and they figure on their own how to search an area in the best possible way.”
22 JUNE 2022
Companies are increasingly investing in systems with sensors that can capture employees’ interaction with physical objects such as motors and robots. Small computers inside the physical objects must adapt optimally to the context in which the objects are to be used to be a commercial or practical success.
Mahyar Tourchi Moghaddam, who is Assistant Professor at the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute at the University of Southern Denmark, is very interested in this area. Moghaddam is associated with DIREC and the project ‘Cyber-Physical Systems with Humans in the Loop’, which will explore and map out how software engineers can best design cyber-physical systems adapted to users and the context in which they are to function.
The aim of DIREC is to expand the capacity within research, innovation and education in digital technologies in Denmark. In addition, DIREC shall contribute to the competitiveness of Denmark through collaboration with Danish businesses and the public sector on developing new innovative products and services based on the newest digital technologies.
DIREC is partially funded by Innovation Fund Denmark.
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