The three-year research project SWILT (Swarm Intelligence Layer to Control Autonomous Agents) was launched at the Alpen-Adria-University in Klagenfurt. In collaboration with Lakeside Labs GmbH , Infineon Technologies Austria AG und Novunex GmbH , the university is conducting research on cyber-physical system swarms to connect the real with the virtual world.

According to the researchers, the behavior of closely connected production facilities is comparable to that of ant and bee colonies or fish and bird swarms. Using these natural models, the SWILT project models entire industrial facilities as swarms to better understand the increasing complexity and dynamics of Industry 4.0 systems. The local swarm rules are anchored in a three-tier architecture that allows independent swarms to communicate with each other via 5G. The research partners hope that 5G-Playground, scheduled to be launched at Lakeside Science & Technology Park on the shores of Wörthersee lake, will yield important findings for swarm algorithms, which will be implemented as a 5G network application.