InnoTrans 2024
Future railway systems need to be increasingly digitalized, which closely relates to group's research area of design patterns, implementation paradigms, and assessment methodologies for dependable distributed systems. Our expertise reaches from embedded systems and IoT, over operating systems and middlewares, to data center operation and Cloud applications. We actively research and teach in the fields of current and future digital railway systems in cooperation with leading partners from industry, academia, and operation.
FlexiDug
The project FlexiDug analyzes infrastructures in the Lausitz mining region and develops a concept for future transport opportunities. A digital twin using Building Information Models (BIM) will be created to represent the current railway infrastructures digitally and consistently. Retrofit sensors and self-organizing wireless networks will be developed to monitor vital infrastructure elements. To enable cost-efficient re-use of infrastructures for passenger service interwoven with on-demand cargo traffic, digital dynamic command and control technology, as well as a Dispatcher in the Cloud will be prototyped.
In 2022, the project FlexiDug had the honor of being been displayed at the booth of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr, BMDV).
Digital Rail Summer School
The Digital Rail Summer School is a teaching, project, fair, and exchange platform to address challenges of digitalizing the railway sector by bringing together students, researchers and practitioners from IT, railway, and authorization sectors.
DiAK
The project DiAK (Digital St. Andrew's cross / Digitales Andreaskreuz) aims to increase safety and comfort for road users by digitalizing level crossings. With DiAK, road users equipped with Vehicle-to-everything (V2C) and Cellular Vehicle-to-everything (C-V2C) technology are provided with information such as warnings of passing trains at level crossings without barriers, the duration a level crossing will remain closed, or route alternatives.
RailChain
The project RailChain evaluated Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) for vendor-independent, secure digital identities and data recording in railway applications. To fulfill the real-time requirements for on-train juridical recording, domain-specific consensus protocols have been developed. A demonstrator – the Juridical Blockchain Recorder (JBR) – has been installed on the advanced TrainLab.
In 2022, the project RailChain had the honor of being been displayed in the advanced TrainLab at the outdoor area of the fair.
Rail2X
The Rail2X – Smart Services project explored use cases for Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology in the railway sector. Using the Wi-Fi-like technology (IEEE 802.11p), three examples have been realized: 1) service and diagnosis, for predictive maintenance using data collected by trains; 2) "Anrufschranke", to automatically open and close barriers for which opening and closing must normally be requested by phone; and 3) flag stops, so stopping of the train can be requested electronically instead of visually.
teaching
Please find below a list of railway-related projects from our teaching activities:
- Master's Theses "Using Railway Simulations for Integration Tests of EULYNX Components" by Philipp Schmidt, 2024
- Bachelor's Project and Theses "Neue Ansätze in der Entwicklung digitaler Leit- und Sicherungstechnik" in cooperation with DB Systel GmbH (six students, starting winter term 2023/2024)
- Master's Theses "Using Machine Learning for Intrusion Detection in a Combined Car and Train Monitoring System" by Mario Freund, 2023
- Bachelor's Project and Theses "FlexiDug – neue Verkehrsspinnen für die Lausitz" in cooperation with DB Systel GmbH (six students, starting winter term 2022/2023)
- Master's Theses "Bridging the ITS-G5 and C-V2X Gap: Development and Simulation of a V2X converter" by Paul Geppert, 2022
- Master's Theses "A Distributed Architecture for a Safety-critical ETCS-OBU" by Hendrik Tjabben, 2021
- Bachelor's Project and Theses "Die IoT-Middleware im Zug: Vernetzte Sensorik für zustandsorientierte Instandhaltung" in cooperation with DB Systel GmbH (five students, 2020/2021)
- Bachelor's Project and Theses "IoT, Sensorik, Nachvollziehbarkeit – die Software-Blackbox" in cooperation with DB Systel GmbH (four students, 2019/2020)
- Bachelor's Project and Theses "OpenRSU, V2X-Messaging, SUMO: Rail2X" in cooperation with DB Systel GmbH (five students, 2018/2019)
- Bachelor's Project and Theses "IoT & Blockchain – Rail2X SmartServices" in cooperation with DB Systel GmbH (three students, 2017/2018)
more
In the context of the topics around digital rail, the academic network eisenbahninformatik.de (railway computer science) is also to be mentioned.
In addition to the topics around digital rail, the Professorship for Operating Systems and Middleware works likewise intensely in a variety of other research areas. Prominent examples are telemedicine, energy-aware computing, heterogeneous computing, resource management, decentralized designs, virtualization, as well as architectures and programming for future server systems.
To learn more about the group's current and past research activities, the research and publications pages are recommended entry points.