Individual Projects

In addition to our periodically scheduled project courses (see right column), you can also participate in a number of individual and group projects. Depending on your program and its exam regulation, these can be credited as a master project module. Please contact us for details. Note that some of the proposed project works are also offered as Bachelor's or Master's  thesis. Size and difficulty will be adapted to the kind of work that is finally done.

“V2X-based Collision Avoidance System for MTB Trail Riding,” Project or B.Sc./M.Sc. Thesis, F. Kargl (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
The alps see a surge of trail parks being built. These trails include frequent turns and jumps which are often ridden at high speeds. If bikes block the trail due to a stop or accident, limited line-of-sight can lead to collisions and severe accidents when following bikes crash into the blocking bike. With this work, we want to investigate if V2X communication can provide blocked trail warnings to approaching bikes so that riders can reduce their speed and avoid accidents. For this, a number of technologies that have been developed for collision warning in automotive and street-based scenarios need to be investigated, adapted, and tested for suitability. This includes the V2X communication module and antenna, that need to be adjusted to fit into a bike. Communication ranges and reliability have to be tested in realistic outdoor settings. Second, it needs to be reliably determined whether a bike actually blocks a trail or whether the rider just stopped next to it. For this purpose, GPS accuracy alone is insufficient and might have to coupled with crash detection using motion sensors or camera-based image recognition to detect whether a bike blocks a trail or not. Last but not least, a suitable user interface has to be developed and tested that allows to warn approaching drivers in a reliable and intuitive way which works even during trail rides. The envisioned thesis or project can address one or multiple of these challenges, multiple students could also collaborate on the topic. The project is collaboration between Ulm University and University of Trento. After prototype development, field tests in the Alps in South Tyrolia / Alto Adige are planned.
“Tracking updates in BFT-SMaRt for the SMRteez framework,” Project, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2022 – Open.
In the institute, there is an own framework for replicated state machines, a concept to implement fault-tolerant services. Our framework is called SMRteez and based on BFT-SMaRt, a mature and popular framework written in Java. SMRteez has a different internal structure compared to BFT-SMaRt. However, many classes are identical or have only slight changes. Goal of this project is to track which classes of SMRteez are actually very close to BFT-SMaRt. This could be annotated in a machine-readable format in the source. Further, a tool shall be developed that can automatically identify software updates in BFT-SMaRt as long as these affect derived classes in SMRteez. If there is room, the tooling can be extended to allow supervised updates of SMRteez classes based on updates in BFT-SMaRt.
“Differenzdarstellung von Ordnungen in in.Crease,” Projectarbeit, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2022 – Open.
in.Crease ist ein geplantes Informationssystem für Studierende. In Vorarbeiten wurde ein Modul für die Darstellung und das Editieren von Satzungen entworfen, z.B. von Prüfungsordnungen oder Zulassungssatzungen. Ein gewünschtes Feature ist es, Ordnungsänderungen, z.B. eine neue Prüfungsordnung, mit einem Diff zu deren Vorgängerversionen ansprechend darzustellen. In Vorarbeiten hat sich gezeigt, dass ein Datenmodell ohne die Berücksichtigung dieses Features die nachträgliche Integration erschwert oder unmöglich macht. Diese Arbeit soll dieses Feature implementieren und wenn nötig das Datenmodell genau daraufhin anpassen. Mögliche zusätzliche Features (eventuell auch in Anschlussprojekten) könnten ein ansprechendes Layout-Konzept, die Reintegration eines Editors sowie eine Versionsverwaltung sein.
“Comparison and Implementation of HTTPS-based Service Function Chaining Proof of Transit Solutions.,” Project, B. Leonard (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2022 – Open.
Service Function Chaining (SFC) is a technice to steer traffic through specific network services. To proof that the traffic was actually forwarded through the specified services, a Proof Of Transit (PoT) is used. In this project, different PoT approaches are compared and the most promising solution implemented in a HTTPS-based SFC environment.
“Zero Trust SFC enabled HTTP based Multi Factor Authentication,” Projectarbeit, L. Bradatsch (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2020 – Open.
Since Google introduced their BeyondCorp project, Zero Trust (ZT) is one of the most popular buzzwords in the area of network security. In a ZT network, Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) and Policy Decision Point (PDP) are responsible for central authentication and authorization (Auth*). Both mentioned components and conventional security functions such as firewalls work largely independently of each other when it comes to processing packets. This leads to inefficient scenarios in which all packets are processed by time- consuming security functions. By coupling the conventional security functions to the PEP/PDP, higher efficiency in security-relevant packet processing can be achieved. This can be achieved by leveraging the Service Function Chaining (SFC) approach. SFC allows the dynamic chaining of conventional network service functions such as HTTP header enricher or firewalls. For each network flow can be decided what service function should be applied to all the flow's packets. The PEP/PDP in a ZT network acts then as the orchestrator, decides about the functions that should be chained together. By doing this, it can be efficiently decided which function should be applied. The goal of the project is to implement one of the thus orchestrated security service functions namely a Multi Factor Authenticator (MFA) that is embedded in a already existing Zero Trust SFC prototype. The MFA must be HTTP based and written in Go. Requirements: Good knowledge of Go and security protocols).
“Applications for the LoRaPark Ulm,” Project, F. Kargl (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2020 – Open.
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Marion Köhler
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Institute of Distributed Systems
Ulm University
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