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.
“User interface for the in.Crease person and committee module,” Projectarbeit, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
in.Crease ist ein geplantes Informationssystem für Studierende. In Vorarbeiten wurde bereits ein Modul entworfen, um Personen und Gremien zu verwalten und geeignet darszustellen. Ziel dieses Projekts ist es die Anforderungen an die Darstellung von Personen und Gremien zu überarbeiten und neu zusammen zu stellen. Auch das Datenmodell soll auf Vollständigkeit und Konsistenz abgeklopft werden. Im Anschluss sollen UI-Elemente sowie entsprechende Berechtigungen für die einzelnen Use-Cases implementiert werden - je nach Umfang eventuell nur eine Teilmenge von wichtigen Use-Cases. Zu den Use-Cases gehören nicht nur lesende Zugriffe in Form von geeigneten Anzeigeelementen sondern auch Editier-, Anlege- und Löschfunktionen. Die Arbeit hat damit einen konzeptionellen Anteil sowie einen Implementierungsanteil, der mit TypeScript und Angular in Verbindung mit einem Redux-Store.
“Tracking updates in BFT-SMaRt for the SMRteez framework,” Project, F. J. Hauck (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – 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.
“Integration and evaluation of trust opinions in ETSI messages,” Project or Bachelor's thesis, A. Hermann (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
In the future, vehicles will be able to exchange information with each other and with infrastructure. In this way, safety-cirtical applications such as Cooperative Intersection Management (CIM) can be realized that use data sent by other entities such as vehicles or infrastructure. Since these applications are safety-critical, it is important for the application to evaluate the trustworthiness of the data provided by other entities before using them in these applications. How trustworthy the data is can be specified by the sender of the message. The structure of the messages sent by the entities is specified by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). In the current standard of the messages, such trust opinions indicating the trustworhtiness of the data are not defined. Therefore, in this thesis/project ETSI messages such as CAMs are extened so that trust opinions can be set for the provided data. In the second step, these defined messages are implemented in a traffic and network simulation tool. Finally, the impact of the extended ETSI messages is compared to the standard ETSI messages based on certain performance metrics.
“Evidence based calculation of atomic trust opinions in the context of subjective logic,” Project or Bachelor or Master's thesis, A. Hermann (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
In the context of Cooperative, connected and automated mobility, a vehicle relies on data from multiple sources to drive autonomously. On the one hand, it relies on data provided by an external entity, such as a road side unit or another vehicle, which is received over the V2X network. On the other hand, it relies on data provided by internal entities within the vehicle, such as a sensor installed in the vehicle or an ECU in the vehicle. Since the autonomous driving functionality is very safety critical, it is important for the function to evaluate the trustworthiness of the data provided by the internal and external entities. In this project/thesis, several entities in the context of an autonomous vehicle are selected. Examples of internal entities could be a GNSS sensor or a camera. Examples of external entities could be another vehicle or a road side unit. Based on the selected entities, trust sources are determined to provide evidence of whether the entity is trustworhty or not. Such trust sources could be security controls such as an IDS or Secure Boot. Finally, an approach is created that determines a trust opinion about the selected entitiy based on the selected trust sources in the context of subjective logic. This calcualated trust opinion describes the trustworthiness of this entity.
“Evaluating Subjective Trust Networks through Secure Multiparty Computation,” Project or Bachelor or Master's thesis, J. Dispan (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
In the future, vehicles will exchange information regarding the current traffic situation and planned maneuvers. While this has the potential to improve safety and fuel efficiency though cooperative driving, it opens up a novel attack vector: malicious actors might inject incorrect information, which could lead to accidents and thus poses a serious threat to safety. One approach to mitigate such attacks makes use of Subjective Trust Networks: vehicles form Trust Opinions on other vehicles, which are expressed using Subjective Logic and stored in a graph structure. Different vehicles can merge their Trust Networks in order to gain a more complete picture of the trustworthiness of their communication partners and make more informed decisions. However, privacy and safety considerations forbid that different vehicles simply exchange their trust networks. This thesis/project should investigate the feasibility of merging an evaluating Subjective Trust Networks using Secure Multiparty Computation (SMPC). For this, it is first necessary to precisely define the task at hand: Which calculations must be performed under SMPC in order to protect confidential information? Which information cannot be protected? Second, a prototype for an example scenario in which vehicles merge and evaluate their trust Networks should be implemented using a suitable framework for SMPC. Third, benchmarks should be performed that show the (non-)applicability of SMPC for the described use-case.
“Development of a Hardware Visualization Tool for the Operating Systems Lecture,” Project, A. Heß (Supervisor), F. J. Hauck (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
The task of this project is to develop a web-based interactive application that can be used as part of the operating systems lecture for educational purposes. The application should encompass a graphical emulation of basic computer hardware components such as a simple processor with a narrow instruction set or a memory management unit. The goal is to have an educational tool for students to help them develop intuition for concepts like instruction processing or virtual memory management
“Conceptualization and implementation of a Cooperative Intersection Management System,” Project or Bachelor's thesis, A. Hermann (Supervisor), F. Kargl (Examiner), Inst. of Distr. Sys., Ulm Univ., 2023 – Open.
Cooperative Intersection Management Systems are a promising approach to improve efficiency and safety at intersections. For this purpose, communicating vehicles are needed that can communicate with each other and with infrastructure, which is also referred to as V2X-Communication. Based on the information exchanged between the vehicles and the infrastructure, a Cooperative Intersection Management System can be realized. There exist various approaches to realized such a Cooperative Intersection Management System. Therefore, the first step of the thesis/project is to conduct a survey on existing approaches of a Cooperative Intersection Management System. Based on this survey, the most promising approach will be selected. In the next step, the selected approach will be implemented in a traffic simulation environment called CARLA. Finally, a performance analysis of the implemented approach will be conducted and compared to a state-of-the-art traffic light system.
“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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