Distributed Systems
Distributed Systems
The Distributed Systems (DSY) research group of the InIT focuses on scalable and reliable implementation of Distributed Systems across various areas (Internet, Cloud, Robotics, Enterprises, etc) with a Cloud-Native/-First approach. We address questions such as:
- How to build, run, and evaluate a performant (System/Energy/Financial) Cloud-Infrastructure (Network, Storage, Compute)
- What architecture best suits your specific cloud-native application?
- Which service model (IaaS, CaaS, PaaS, FaaS, ...) ensures optimal implementation of an application?
- Which tools are needed for development, operation and monitoring cloud-native services and applications?
- How to offer applications "as a service" (SaaS/PaaS/FaaS)?
- How to monetize modern IT “as a service”?
- How to ensure Site Reliability from a provider and consumer perspective?
- How to integrate the "physical world" into complex IT services?
- How to exploit Cloud Computing for specific application domains, like automation via Robots, the Health domain (Hospitals, Day Care, Assisted Living), or the domain of Environmental Computer Science (Farming, Live Stock, Forest Management)
The research group is engaged in international projects within the EU research framework and works closely with partners from the private sector on innovative products within Innosuisse funded or directly financed projects.
The knowledge gained from applied research and development is transferred to students of computer science courses in the following modules:
- Operating Systems (Linux/Unix)
- Distributed Systems
- Cloud Computing 1 (Cloud Concepts und Infrastructure)
- Cloud Computing 2 (Cloud Platforms and Applications)
- Serverless and Cloud Application Development
- Cloud Robotics
- Applied Cloud Computing for Medical Applications
- System Performance Evaluation (Coming Autumn 2026)
- Cloud Computing (Master)
- System Performance Evaluation (Master/EVA)
Cloud Computing
The Init Cloud Computing Lab (ICCLAB) is dedicated to the automated deployment, operation and usage of configurable, highly scalable and resilient IT resources on a pay-per-use basis. In addition to infrastructure virtualization, this includes platform services for automated application delivery, scalable back-end, and monitoring of services and applications.
Service Prototyping
The Service Prototyping Lab (SPLAB) addresses the implementation and validation of complex services in cloud or post-cloud environments. In addition to the migration of existing services to the cloud, the main focus is on modern application architectures (Cloud Native Applications, Microservices, Serverless), the provisioning of tools for optimal implementation, the experimental validation of concepts and their monetization (Cloud Accounting and Billing).
Cloud Robotics
The Init Cloud Comupting Lab (ICCLAB) also addresses the integration of robotic applications into complex networked services. The usage of elastic cloud services allows to extend the capabilities of robots (computing power, context information, artificial intelligence, ...) as well as to manage and coordinate them. Programming frameworks and automation services enable developers to integrate robots into services without having in-depth knowledge at device level.
Unfortunately, no list of projects can be displayed here at the moment. Until the list is available again, the project search on the ZHAW homepage can be used.
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Toffetti, Giovanni; Militano, Leonardo; Tharaka, Ratnayake; Straub, Mark,
2023.
ROS-based robotic applications orchestration in the compute continuum : challenges and approaches[paper].
In:
Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 16th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing.
16th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC), Taormina, Italy, 4-7 December 2023.
Association for Computing Machinery.
pp. 49.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3603166.3632555
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Gkikopoulos, Panagiotis; Kropf, Peter; Schiavoni, Valerio; Spillner, Josef,
2022.
AVOC : history-aware data fusion for reliable IoT analytics[paper].
In:
Proceedings of the 23rd International Middleware Conference Industrial Track.
23rd ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference (Middleware), Québec City, Canada, 7-11 November 2022.
Association for Computing Machinery.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3564695.3564772
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Murphy, Seán; Militano, Leonardo; Toffetti Carughi, Giovanni; Maurer, Remo,
2022.
Efficient delivery of robotics programming educational content using cloud robotics[paper].
In:
2022 7th International Conference on Robotics and Automation Engineering (ICRAE 2022).
7th International Conference on Robotics and Automation Engineering (ICRAE), Singapore, 18-20 November 2022.
IEEE.
pp. 222-226.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRAE56463.2022.10056179
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Toffetti, Giovanni; Militano, Leonardo; Murphy, Seán; Maurer, Remo; Straub, Mark,
2022.
Cloud native robotic applications with GPU sharing on Kubernetes[paper].
In:
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Kyoto, Japan, 23-27 October 2022.
arXiv.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2210.03936
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Hass, Daniel; Spillner, Josef,
2022.
In:
2022 21st International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC).
21st International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC), Basel, Switzerland, 11-13 July 2022.
IEEE.
pp. 121-128.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPDC55340.2022.00026