I tried in the beginning the vaadin-osgi-integration. However it is broken. See http://karaf.922171.n3.nabble.com/Vaadin-8-application-on-Karaf-4-3-1-td4059899.html.
Installation on Karaf 4:
mvn install
Login in into the Karaf console and execute
karaf@root()> feature:repo-add mvn:de.rhierlmeier/vaadin8osgi/1.0.0-SNAPSHOT/xml/features
Adding feature url mvn:de.rhierlmeier/vaadin8osgi/1.0.0-SNAPSHOT/xml/features
karaf@root()> feature:install vaadin8osgi
Got to the web browser and open http://localhost:8181/ui