Avatar gender and personal space invasion anxiety level in desktop collaborative virtual environments

We report an investigation exploring the effect of avatar gender on the anxiety level caused by personal space (PS) invasion in desktop collaborative virtual environments (DCVE). We outline an experiment in which participants, of both genders, whose avatars PS were invaded by other avatars of either gender, reported their anxiety levels through the use of a post-experiment questionnaire. The data from the questionnaire are analysed and discussed. The results suggest that the combination of the gender of the invading avatar and the avatar being invaded has an influence on the PS invasion anxiety level and that the ranking of gender combination groups has a striking difference from those observed for PS invasion in physical environments. Results also show that the participants in general did not register high anxiety, contrary to what one might expect from personal space invasion in the physical world.

Mediating the expression of emotion in educational collaborative virtual environments: an experimental study

The use of avatars with emotionally expressive faces is potentially highly beneficial to communication in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs), especially when used in a distance learning context. However, little is known about how, or indeed whether, emotions can effectively be transmitted through the medium of a CVE. Given this, an avatar head model with limited but human-like expressive abilities was built, designed to enrich CVE communication. Based on the facial action coding system (FACS), the head was designed to express, in a readily recognisable manner, the six universal emotions. An experiment was conducted to investigate the efficacy of the model. Results indicate that the approach of applying the FACS model to virtual face representations is not guaranteed to work for all expressions of a particular emotion category. However, given appropriate use of the model, emotions can effectively be visualised with a limited number of facial features. A set of exemplar facial expressions is presented.     

Evaluating the effects of frame of reference on spatial collaboration using desktop collaborative virtual environments

Spatial collaboration is an everyday activity in which people work together to solve a spatial problem. For example, a group of people will often arrange furniture together or exchange directions with one another. Collaborative virtual environments using desktop PCs are particularly useful for spatial activities when the participants are distributed. This work investigates ways to enhance distributed, collaborative spatial activities. This paper explores how different frames of reference affect spatial collaboration. Specifically, it reports on an experiment that examines different combinations of exocentric and egocentric frames of reference with two users. Tasks involve manipulating an object, where one participant knows the objective (director) and the other performs the interactions (actor). It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the different combinations for a spatial collaboration task. Findings from this study demonstrate that frames of reference affect collaboration in a variety of ways and simple exocentric-egocentric combinations do not always provide the most usable solution.     

Intelligent assistance for teachers in collaborative e-learning environments

Collaborative learning environments provide a set of tools for students acting in groups to interact and accomplish an assigned task. In this kind of systems, students are free to express and communicate with each other, which usually lead to collaboration and communication problems that may require the intervention of a teacher. In this article, we introduce an intelligent agent approach to assist teachers through monitoring participations made by students within a collaborative distance learning environment, detecting conflictive situations in which a teacher’s intervention may be necessary. High precision rates achieved on conflict detection scenarios suggest great potential for the application of the proposed rule-based approach for providing personalized assistance to teachers during the development of group works.     

Tele-immersive collaborative virtual environment for intuitive interpretation

The purpose of tele-immersive collaboration is to enable people in separate locations to work together effectively by the Virtual Reality (VR) technology facilitating the human intuitive insight and interpretation. Consequently, it is important to cogitate with figures and characters as well as voice communication in Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). In this paper, we constructed tele-immersive CVE with annotation capability and free-hand drawing of characters and figures into Immersive Projection Technology (IPT) environment. In addition, participants from remote sites connected over a Wide Area Network (WAN) were enabled to interact with each other by sharing annotations via a PDA application. Moreover, we developed applications for scientific visualization and, for intellectual work based on KJ Method inside a tele-immersive CVE. From these results, we are able to maintain essential information for thinking by making annotation on IPT environment, and have proved the system can support intuitive understanding in remote collaborative work. This work was presented in part at the 12th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 25–27, 2007     

A collaborative virtual geographic environment based on P2P and Grid technologies

Solving a geographic problem usually requires collaborative work among a group of people in different geographic locations. Collaborative virtual geographic environment (CVGE), an integrated technology, offers an intuitive, efficient, and interactive visualization environment through which geographically separated users can explore complicated spatial information and conduct collaborative work. In this paper, two new technologies, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Grid computing, are tightly coupled to develop a CVGE system. This paper evaluates the potential contributions of the P2P and Grid technology to CVGE systems. Using a Grid based system architecture efficiently integrates and shares geographically distributed resources as well as modeling procedures built on different platforms. To offer a shared and interactive virtual collaborative geographic environment for resolving geographic problems, we developed several P2P services including a terrain visualization collaboration service and a video collaboration service. Finally, a CVGE prototype system is implemented for collaboration on silt dam planning on the Loess plateau. The experimental results show that the scheme developed in this paper is efficient and feasible.     

Carpeno: interfacing remote collaborative virtual environments with table-top interaction

Creativity is enhanced by communication and collaboration. Thus, the increasing number of distributed creative tasks requires better support from computer-mediated communication and collaborative tools. In this paper we introduce “Carpeno”, a new system for facilitating intuitive face-to-face and remote collaboration on creative tasks. Normally the most popular and efficient way for people to collaborate is face-to-face, sitting around a table. Computer augmented surface environments, in particular interactive table-top environments, are increasingly used to support face-to-face meetings. They help co-located teams to develop new ideas by facilitating the presentation, manipulation, and exchange of shared digital documents displayed on the table-top surface. Users can see each other at the same time as the information they are talking about. In this way the task space and communication space can be brought together in a more natural and intuitive way. The discussion of digital content is redirected from a computer screen, back to a table where people can gather around. In contrast, collaborative virtual environments (CVE) are used to support remote collaboration. They frequently create familiar discussion scenarios for remote interlocutors by utilizing room metaphors. Here, virtual avatars and table metaphors are used, where the participants can get together and communicate with each other in a way that allows behaviour that is as close to face-to-face collaboration as possible. The Carpeno system described here combines table-top interaction with a CVE to support intuitive face-to-face and remote collaboration. This allows for simultaneous co-located and remote collaboration around a common, interactive table.

Analyzing place metaphors in 3D educational collaborative virtual environments

In the recent years, the usage of three dimensional (3D) collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) for educational purposes has increased. The metaphors behind the design of virtual places are quite diverse, from replication of real universities to art museums and scientific labs. This paper reports the results of a case study where the students of our university, as a part of their course assignment, analyzed place metaphors used in a range of 3D educational CVEs vs. the corresponding educational goals. The students suggested a design for a virtual campus representing the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The results of this study provide some suggestions concerning the characterization of different design features in educational CVEs and the suitability of such features for different educational goals. Also, a preliminary set of design guidelines for an ideal virtual campus representing a real university is presented. Finally, some challenges associated with using 3D CVEs in various educational situations are discussed.     

Virtual interpersonal touch: Haptic interaction and copresence in collaborative virtual environments

As digital communication becomes more commonplace and sensory rich, understanding the manner in which people interact with one another is crucial. In the current study, we examined the manners in which people touch digital representations of people, and compared those behaviors to the manner in which they touch digital representations of nonhuman objects. Results demonstrated that people used less force when touching people than other nonhuman objects, and that people touched the face with less force than the torso area. Finally, male digital representations were touched with more force than female representations by subjects of both genders. We discuss the implications of these data to the development of haptic communication systems as well as for a methodology of measuring the amount of copresence in virtual environments.

Nonverbal communication interface for collaborative virtual environments

Nonverbal communication is an important aspect of real-life face-to-face interaction and one of the most efficient ways to convey emotions, therefore users should be provided the means to replicate it in the virtual world. Because articulated embodiments are well suited to provide body communication in virtual environments, this paper first reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages of complex embodiments. After a brief introduction to nonverbal communication theories, we present our solution, taking into account the practical limitations of input devices and social science aspects. We introduce our sample of actions and implementation using our VLNET (Virtual Life Network) networked virtual environment and discuss the results of an informal evaluation experiment.     

The roles of sensory modalities in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs)

This study was conducted to assess the effects of sensorial modalities on user performance, perception, and behavior in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Participants played a CVE game, air hockey, together with a remote partner under different sensory modality conditions, depending on the type of sensory feedback provided: visual-only (V), visual–haptic (V + H), and visual–haptic–audio feedback (V + H + A). Three types of measurements were used as dependent variables: (1) task performance measured as playing time, (2) user perception including the sense of presence, the sense of togetherness, and perceived collaboration, and (3) behavior measurement including the amount of force applied and the mallet deviation. Results of the study indicated that the task performance, perception, and user behavior in CVEs can be affected due to supported sensory modalities. Therefore, the multiple sensory information types that are required to perform the task at hand should be provided to effectively support collaboration between people in CVEs. The outcomes of this research should have a broad impact on multimodal user interaction, including research on physiological, psychophysical, and psychological mechanisms underlying human perception on multisensory feedback in CVEs.     

Collaborative configuration in virtual environments

Most collaborative work in virtual environments involves creating and changing objects according to some rules which correspond to what is known as configuration tasks in the field of knowledge based systems. Also, tasks such as presenting information as 3D objects in a virtual environment or dynamically changing (reconfiguring) embodiments to adapt to an environment are configuration tasks. These tasks can be supported by a generic tool, a configuration engine. However collaborative configuration requires a high level of interactivity to be meaningful which hence must be supported by the engine. We are, therefore, utilising our previous experiences in developing configuration engines to develop one, 3dObelics, that is suited for the highly interactive tasks of collaborative configuration in virtual environments. The engine is built on the idea of viewing configuration as a pure constraint satisfaction problem and that a well-defined modelling language can overcome the difficulties that are associated with constraint programming. 3dObelics uses DIVE, a tool kit for building collaborative virtual environments, and a system for speech control of agents in DIVE labelled Talking Agents. 3dObelics is meant to act as a platform for building multi-user configuration applications with a minimum of programming. To our knowledge, 3dObelics is the first general tool for this.     

The design and realization of CoViD: a system for collaborative virtual 3D design

Many important decisions in the design process are made during fairly early on, after designers have presented initial concepts. In many domains, these concepts are already realized as 3D digital models. Then, in a meeting, the stakeholders for the project get together and evaluate these potential solutions. Frequently, the participants in this meeting want to interactively modify the proposed 3D designs to explore the design space better. Today’s systems and tools do not support this, as computer systems typically support only a single user and computer-aided design tools require significant training. This paper presents the design of a new system to facilitate a collaborative 3D design process. First, we discuss a set of guidelines which have been introduced by others and that are relevant to collaborative 3D design systems. Then, we introduce the new system, which consists of two main parts. The first part is an easy-to-use conceptual 3D design tool that can be used productively even by naive users. The tool provides novel interaction techniques that support important properties of conceptual design. The user interface is non-obtrusive, easy-to-learn, and supports rapid creation and modification of 3D models. The second part is a novel infrastructure for collaborative work, which offers an interactive table and several large interactive displays in a semi-immersive setup. It is designed to support multiple users working together. This infrastructure also includes novel pointing devices that work both as a stylus and a remote pointing device. The combination of the (modified) design tool with the collaborative infrastructure forms a new platform for collaborative virtual 3D design. Then, we present an evaluation of the system against the guidelines for collaborative 3D design. Finally, we present results of a preliminary user study, which asked naive users to collaborate in a 3D design task on the new system.     

Delegating revocations and authorizations in collaborative business environments

Efficient collaboration allows organizations and individuals to improve the efficiency and quality of their business activities. Delegations, as a signif icant approach, may occur as workflow collabora tions, supply chain collaborations, or collaborative commerce. Role-based delegation models have been used as flexible and efficient access management for collaborative business environments. Delegation revocations can provide significant functionalities for the models in business environments when the delegated roles or permissions are required to get back. However, problems may arise in the revocation process when one user delegates user U a role and another user delegates U a negative authorization of the role. This paper aims to analyse various role-based delegation revocation features through examples. Revocations are categorized in four dimensions: Dependency, Resilience, Propagation and Dominance. According to these dimensions, sixteen types of revocations exist for specific requests in collaborative business environments: DependentWeakLocalDelete, Dependent WeakLocalNegative, DependentWeakGlobalDelete, DependentWeakGlobalNegative, IndependentWeak LocalDelete, IndependentWeakLocalNegative, Inde pendentWeakGlobalDelete, IndependentWeakGlobal Negative, and so on. We present revocation delegating models, and then discuss user delegation authorization and the impact of revocation operations. Finally, comparisons with other related work are discussed.

Opportunities and challenges in improving surgical work flow

Safe and efficient surgical operations depend on a work environment larger than the individual operating room (OR) and on communications at different levels of the hospital organization. Extensive communication is needed before and during surgery to ensure that surgical rooms, equipment, and supplies; patients; surgeons; supporting personnel; and accompanying documentation are all ready at the appropriate times. In this article, we compile the results of three of our studies of communication activities outside ORs, with the goal of identifying opportunities and challenges in the workflow of surgery. The first study demonstrates the amount of communication work performed by OR coordinators. The second study demonstrates the potential functions of a whiteboard in communication. The third study describes an organizational learning strategy of proactive event reporting. We apply computer-supported cooperative work and organizational learning concepts to the findings and suggest ways in which information technology may improve surgical workflow.     

Enhancing empathy instruction using a collaborative virtual learning environment for children with autistic spectrum conditions

Empathy is an essential part of normal social function that people with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) lack. This study uses the intervention of enhancing empathy via 3D animated scenarios of empathy in a virtual learning environment to help those deficient in empathy. Specifically, this study explores the understanding of empathy, perspective-taking and the performance of understanding of empathy via a collaborative virtual learning environment (CVLE) - empathy system. The study, which used CVLE - 3D empathy systems and three participants diagnosed with ASCs, conducted multiple baseline research for evidence of improved understanding of empathy via system usage. This experimental study lasted 5 months and the experimental results indicate that using the CVLE 3D empathy system had significant and positive effects on participant use of empathy, both within the CVLE 3D empathy system and in terms of maintaining learning in understanding empathy.     

Accommodating mixed sensory/modal preferences in collaborative writing systems

Writers use the abstractions of words to create meaning. But the activity of writing spans multiple concrete senses and modes. Technology-enhanced collaborative writing systems need to be sensitive to the preferred senses and modes of information in which writing teams want to work. Some preferences seem rooted in the senses (seeing vs. motor coordination); others seem based in the preferred modality of inputting or outputting information (speaking vs. writing; listening vs. reading). Still others seem based in the role of the writer on the team (author or commenter). We offer a framework for understanding some of these preferences and a prototype editor (the Prep Editor) we have been using to study them empirically.     

Conformance notions for the coordination of interaction components

In component-based development, software components are taken as units of composition. Nevertheless, to achieve the widely disseminated status of components being plugged together as simple ‘Lego Pieces’, the integration of components must be carefully designed, systematised and verified; only this can ensure reliable architectures. In this work, we propose some conformance notions to predict the precise nature of some forms of composition, considering coordination patterns used in the integration. These notions are formalised in terms of the denotational semantics of the process algebra CSP, and assist the designer in common activities during integration, such as the substitution of component specifications by implementations, contract adaptations, and system extensions. To support mechanical verifications using FDR (a model-checker for CSP), we derive test characterisations from the denotational definitions of conformance. We illustrate the application of these notions through a systematic composition strategy of software frameworks, and we mechanically verify the preservation of behavioural component properties in these compositions. Moreover, we characterise the well-formedness of a coordination pattern used in this strategy at the design stage, before components are assembled.     

A framework using cluster-based hybrid network architecture for collaborative virtual surgery

Research on collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) opens the opportunity for simulating the cooperative work in surgical operations. It is however a challenging task to implement a high performance collaborative surgical simulation system because of the difficulty in maintaining state consistency with minimum network latencies, especially when sophisticated deformable models and haptics are involved. In this paper, an integrated framework using cluster-based hybrid network architecture is proposed to support collaborative virtual surgery. Multicast transmission is employed to transmit updated information among participants in order to reduce network latencies, while system consistency is maintained by an administrative server. Reliable multicast is implemented using distributed message acknowledgment based on cluster cooperation and sliding window technique. The robustness of the framework is guaranteed by the failure detection chain which enables smooth transition when participants join and leave the collaboration, including normal and involuntary leaving. Communication overhead is further reduced by implementing a number of management approaches such as computational policies and collaborative mechanisms. The feasibility of the proposed framework is demonstrated by successfully extending an existing standalone orthopedic surgery trainer into a collaborative simulation system. A series of experiments have been conducted to evaluate the system performance. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework is capable of supporting collaborative surgical simulation.     

协同虚拟环境中分层智能化身控制模型的研究

为了增强协同虚拟环境中化身行为控制的智能性和模块独立性,基于VRML和智能代理技术设计和实现了一种分层智能化身控制模型.该模型中化身模拟智能实体的形体和简单行为,代理模拟智能实体的高级行为控制,化身代理和化身之间通过统一的调用接口进行控制和通信,使得模型各层之间有很好的模块独立性,并采用了基于规则的推理和分层有限自动机实现智能行为.最后的实例分析表明了该控制模型的可行性.