Knowledge transfer in globally distributed teams: the role of transactive memory

This paper explores the role of transactive memory in enabling knowledge transfer between globally distributed teams. While the information systems literature has recently acknowledged the role transactive memory plays in improving knowledge processes and performance in colocated teams, little is known about its contribution to distributed teams. To contribute to filling this gap, knowledge‐transfer challenges and processes between onsite and offshore teams were studied at TATA Consultancy Services. In particular, the paper describes the transfer of knowledge between onsite and offshore teams through encoding, storing and retrieving processes. An in‐depth case study of globally distributed software development projects was carried out, and a qualitative, interpretive approach was adopted. The analysis of the case suggests that in order to overcome differences derived from the local contexts of the onsite and offshore teams (e.g. different work routines, methodologies and skills), some specific mechanisms supporting the development of codified and personalized ‘directories’ were introduced. These include the standardization of templates and methodologies across the remote sites as well as frequent teleconferencing sessions and occasional short visits. These mechanisms contributed to the development of the notion of ‘who knows what’ across onsite and offshore teams despite the challenges associated with globally distributed teams, and supported the transfer of knowledge between onsite and offshore teams. The paper concludes by offering theoretical and practical implications.     

To support multidisciplinary communication in VR-based virtual prototyping of mechatronic systems

A typical mechatronic product includes mechanical parts, software techniques, electrical and electronic components. This interdisciplinary character significantly increases the complexity of mechatronic products. Therefore, inefficient communication between the engineers, who come from different domains, becomes one of the main challenges in the development of mechatronic systems. Although, innovations in the field of virtual prototyping can help the engineers to handle a complex system and then accelerate the development processes, the technique itself does not offer a solution to the problem of multidisciplinary communications. In this paper, we present a practical solution of supporting knowledge sharing and communication within a multidisciplinary developing group, whose members need to work cooperatively for doing virtual prototyping of mechatronic systems in VR environment.     

Using immersive virtual environments for certification

As virtual environments move from research laboratories to commercial use, there is a need to define the appropriate role of VEs in certifying the systems they simulate. This article describes the unique features of this developing technology, as well some key issues to consider when using VEs for certification     

虚拟现实软件研究

随着社会生产力和科学技术的不断发展,各行各业对虚拟现实技术及其开发软件的需求日益旺盛。人们对虚拟现实及其系统的研究日益重视。虚拟现实软件种类繁多,功能各异,这给虚拟现实系统开发者带来了困难。文中首先对国内外常用虚拟现实软件的功能和特点进行了分析,并对这些软件的优缺点进行了分析比较,旨在为进行虚拟现实系统软件开发的人员开发虚拟现实系统提供参考。其次,在此基础上,针对当今虚拟现实开发软件存在的缺点,指出了虚拟现实软件未来的发展方向。     

A system design framework-driven implementation of a learning collaboratory

This paper describes a design process to support the development of a learning collaboratory, a distributed, computer-based, virtual space for learning and work. A learning collaboratory, as a distributed distance learning environment, offers great opportunities to expand the way people teach and learn and to broaden educational opportunities to an ever increasing range of learners. The challenge is to design distance learning technologies that engender meaningful learning experiences that take full advantage of the power of computer-mediated communication to support innovative learner-centered and collaborative interactions between students, teachers, subject experts, and resources. First, the paper describes the learning collaboratory design framework (LUCIDIFY), a design process that integrates methods and concepts from cognitive systems engineering, theories of learning and instruction, distributed computing, and computer-supported collaborative learning to guide the principled design of learning collaboratories. Next, the paper describes how LUCIDIFY was used in the design and implementation of the collaborative learning environment for operational systems (CLEOS), a learning collaboratory for teachers, students, and practitioners in the physical sciences. CLEOS features two virtual instrument tutorials, an asynchronous messaging system, a project-based design and management application, and a collaborative multi-user domain infrastructure.     

虚拟手术系统开发软件平台研究

虚拟手术系统用于手术教学训练、手术方案制定、远程手术等方面,它正日益受到人们的关注。虚拟手术融合多种先进技术,其系统研发难度大。现如今涌现出大量开发虚拟手术系统可使用的软件平台,它们封装了建立系统所需的一些关键算法,可以促进国内外开发人员对新算法的研究,并提高新的虚拟手术系统的研发效率,减少重复劳动。文中分类分析了这些软件平台的功能和优缺点,并研究了虚拟手术系统开发软件平台的关键技术。     

A socio-technical approach to improving the systems development process

Research on improving the systems development processes has primarily focused on mechanisms such as tools, software development methodologies, knowledge sharing and process capabilities. This research has yielded considerable insights into improving the systems development process, but the large majority of information systems development projects still continue to be over budget, late, and ineffective in meeting user needs. Together with the advent of software development moving offshore, or consisting of offshore team members, a more holistic approach is appropriate. Approached from a socio-technical perspective the software development process is viewed as a process embedded in a social and a technical subsystem. Drawing upon socio-technical work design principles, this paper suggests how capabilities of the development process can be improved. Data collected from a survey of software development practices in organizations indicates that organizations at different levels of process capabilities differ in work system characteristics as well as process performance. For example, the use of multi-skilled teams was found to be significantly related to the systems development process maturity level as well as significantly related to all the performance measures studied. This paper provides empirical support for the socio-technical approach and provides a theoretical foundation for designing software process initiatives in organizations.     

State-of-the-practice in knowledge-based system verification and validation

The majority of the work in knowledge-based system verification and validation (KBS V&V) has focused on developing techniques and concepts for performing V&V on expert systems. Little information is available on what V&V practices are currently in use by expert system developers. This article describes the results of a survey whose purpose was to begin documenting some of the experiences and problems KBS developers have encountered. The results of the survey suggest that current practices can be improved and some specific recommendations are included. The recommendations include developing requirements for expert system V&V, addressing common issues, recommending a life cycle for expert systems development, addressing readability and modularity issues, and investigating applicability of analysis tools.     

基于龙芯2号的Java虚拟机的移植与优化

Java语言作为一种跨平台的编程语言在企业应用开发、桌面应用开发及嵌入式开发上获得了广泛的应用。为了在龙芯上运行Java程序,将Sun HotSpot Java虚拟机移植到了Linux/龙芯2上,该文描述了移植过程中的主要工作、遇到的问题及解决的方法和优化工作。     

Dynamic data sharing and security in a collaborative product definition management system

Product definition management (PDM) is a system that supports management of both engineering data and the product development process during the total product life cycle. The formation of a virtual enterprise is becoming a growing trend, and vendors of PDM systems have recently developed a new generation of PDM systems called collaborative product definition management (cPDM). This paper presents the concept of a virtual engineering community (VEC) to support concurrent product development within geographically distributed partners. A previous case study has shown that collaborative engineering design may be modelled from a parameter perspective [1]. Effective implementation of the parameter approach raises the following problems: how to support data sharing and secure that span the partner borders. This paper describes the system architecture, deployed security mechanisms, the prototype developed within cPDM, and the system demonstration using a real test. The implementation of this architecture extends a common commercial PDM system (Axalan™) and utilizes standard software to create a security framework for the involved resources. Collaboration infrastructure, shared team spaces and shared resources are essential to enable virtual teams to work together. Various organizational and technical challenges are implied. The outlined architecture features a federated data approach. These issues are discussed and potential perspectives in the area of collaboration engineering are identified.     

面向虚拟检测的测试功能组件研究

为了解决虚拟仪器软件设计效率低、重复劳动多、通用性及互换性差的问题,提出一种开发面向虚拟检测的测试功能组件的方法,即借鉴成熟的组件技术开发一系列可复用的虚拟测试功能组件。描述了虚拟测试功能组件的方法和开发过程,结合实例介绍了以测试功能组件为单位搭建虚拟仪器的过程。基于虚拟测试功能组件可以快速开发可互换虚拟检测仪器。     

基于PC/104的数据采集系统设计

随着计算机技术及虚拟仪器技术的迅速发展，虚拟仪器正逐渐成为测试领域的发展方向。介绍了一种基于虚拟仪器技术开发环境LabVIEW语言和PC／104总线标准的数据采集模块构建的数据采集系统。详细阐述了Diamond—MM-16-AT动态链接库的编写，并开发了使用LabVIEW中的调用库函数CLF来驱动Diamond—MM-16-AT的程序，从而实现对数据采集模块的驱动，完成数据采集工作。实验结果表明，该系统能够有效地实现对信号的高速数据采集和实时图形显示。     

Dealing with software process requirements complexity: an information access proposal based on semantic technologies

Organizations developing software for critical sectors like aerospace, automotive, and medical systems need to apply process requirements coming from different sources: industrial standards, customer-provided requirements, and procedures from internal quality management systems. In these situations, software teams need to deal with complex sets of process requirements that govern different aspects of their work. This paper describes the development of a collaborative, web-based solution to improve access to process requirements. The solution makes use of semantic technologies to handle the context of process requirement. Requirements are contextualized by linking them to activities, tasks, and work products. With this tool, software engineers have a single point of access to all the applicable process requirements, avoiding the risk of missing relevant information.     

Decision support for manufacturing management

Historically, information systems have been used to improve efficiency through such means as clerical automation, inventory status reporting and transactional processing systems. Today, however, to reduce costs, increase return on investments, and achieve competitive advantage, businesses need to have information systems that support managerial decision-making and result in improved effectiveness. To meet this requirement, new approaches are needed in order to define the right problem and work the problem right. By using such techniques as critical success factor analysis followed by a top down system development approach, developing systems through prototyping and using end-user oriented software, these needs can be met.This article describes several company experiences of using a management systems planning and development process. This process in one company presented an opportunity to test the feasibility of developing an alignment between business goals and events critical to the success of the business. Management believed that to succeed in the future they must be forward thinking in their identification and use of information systems to improve managerial effectiveness. Their questions were “What should we do?” and “How should we do it?” By applying these techniques they were able to achieve outstanding results in a very short period of time.     

一个基于3D游戏引擎的虚拟展示方案

虚拟展示的发展代表了当今布展方式发展的趋势，而3D游戏引擎的发展代表了当今计算机技术发展的趋势。文中揭示了隐藏在游戏引擎中的一些技术细节，描述了基于游戏引擎的虚拟展示方案的主要特点，阐述了利用3D游戏引擎来实现虚拟展示的设计构想，并通过一个基于开放的游戏引擎Crystal Space的展示方案实例验证了这一构想的可行性。总之，基于3D游戏引擎的虚拟展示方案是一种行之有效的虚拟展示方案。     

Web-based environment for mechanism simulation integrated with CAD system

The present work describes the architecture of a new approach addressing the sharing of virtual prototypes over the Web with standard programming tools. The usage of standard Web-based technologies leads to easier, effective and more general applications suitable for small and medium size companies with limited resources in that field of research. Designers not only exchange just geometry data, but also more information about design knowledge and design solutions, and collaboration is performed on remote locations. In this work the framework is proposed to model a mechanical product focusing on behavioural criteria. In order to avoid time-consuming virtual model preparation, product variety is defined in single configuration file. The configuration file is covering all the variations, with formalisation of the assembly structure and linking the parts and attributes in uniform way. It enables visualisation of the models from different modelling systems and allows interactive changes and evaluation of the virtual prototype.     

增强现实技术综述

增强现实技术是将计算机渲染生成的虚拟场景与真实世界中的场景无缝融合起来的一种技术,它通过视频显示设备将虚实融合的场景呈现给用户,使人们与计算机之间的交互更加的自然,同时具有广泛的应用前景,因此成为近年来的一个研究热点。随着跟踪注册技术的进步、计算机性能的飞速发展、深度摄像机的普及,以及Light Field投影技术在增强现实中的应用,增强现实技术逐渐成为下一代人机交互的发展方向。该文章首先概述了增强现实的主要研究内容和发展情况,并详细介绍了增强现实的关键技术、开发工具,然后分类概述了增强现实应用案例。     

基于DI-Guy的人体视景仿真研究与应用

本文分析了目前几种典型的虚拟人系统,着重研究了基于DI-Guy的人体视景仿真技术,讨论了虚拟人的开发环境,分析了两种虚拟人生成方法（ACF配置实现及API编程实现）,论述了虚拟人实时运动中的若干问题;着重介绍了虚拟人自定义动作实时驱动方法,克服了用动作库中成型动作驱动的缺点,提高了人体视景仿真的真实性;给出了仓库调
调度仿真系统应用范例。结果表明,包含多个人体实体的虚拟场景在HP6200上的运行帧频大于28帧／秒,而且人体动静态效果逼真,满足一般工程应用需求。     

ABE: an environment for engineering intelligent systems

The ABE multilevel architecture for developing intelligent systems addresses the key problems of intelligent systems engineering: large-scale applications and the reuse and integration of software components. ABE defines a virtual machine for module-oriented programming and a cooperative operating system that provides access to the capabilities of that virtual machine. On top of the virtual machine, ABE provides a number of system design and development frameworks, which embody such programming metaphors as control flow, blackboards, and dataflow. These frameworks support the construction of capabilities, including knowledge processing tools, which span a range from primitive modules to skeletal systems. Finally, applications can be built on skeletal systems. In addition, ABE supports the importation of existing software, including both conventional and knowledge processing tools     

Parallel programming on a high‐performance application‐runtime

High‐performance application development remains challenging, particularly for scientists making the transition to a heterogeneous grid environment. In general areas of computing, virtual environments such as Java and .Net have proved to be successful in fostering application development, allowing users to target and compile to a single environment, rather than a range of platforms, instruction sets and libraries. However, existing runtime environments are focused on business and desktop computing and they do not support the necessary high‐performance computing (HPC) abstractions required by e‐Scientists. Our work is focused on developing an application‐runtime that can support these services natively. The result is a new approach to the development of an application‐runtime for HPC: the Motor system has been developed by integrating a high‐performance communication library directly within a virtual machine. The Motor message passing library is integrated alongside and in cooperation with other runtime libraries and services while retaining a strong message passing performance. As a result, the application developer is provided with a common environment for HPC application development. This environment supports both procedural languages, such as C, and modern object‐oriented languages, such as C#. This paper describes the unique Motor architecture, presents its implementation and demonstrates its performance and use. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.