Project Objectives
Introduction
Ambient Interfaces and the research domain of Ubiquitous Computing represent a third wave in computing. This paradigm shift is characterised by the integration of our increasingly complex technological landscape with the environment we occupy, while removing our perception of the computer in the tasks and activities we undertake. In practice the nature of these ambient interfaces ranges from the simple, such as devices that notify users of events by extending the computer interface into the workplace environment, through to the complex, where intuitive interface technologies such as optical tracking and gesture recognition are used to provide the user with the ability to directly manipulate highly visual information sets without perceiving the underlying technological infrastructure.
The evolution of IT over the past 20 years has led to the development of individual CAD/ CAE workstations. While the computational power available to Engineering professionals has grown exponentially, the collaborative dimension of the workspace has been largely under developed. CoSpaces will provide an evolutionary path towards new and more collaborative work environments. Users of CoSpaces technologies in manufacturing and design, in cooperation with their suppliers, will be able to configure their own collaborative workspaces and utilise ground-breaking innovations in context-aware interfaces, natural interfaces, and “human-centric” workspaces supporting a range of collaboration scenarios and product lifecycles.
Objectives
The CoSpaces project addresses three scientific and technological objectives:
- Evaluate collaboration at individual, team and enterprise levels, and develop collaboration models emphasising applications of problem solving, creativity, participatory and knowledge based design in innovative collaborative work environments;
- Create an innovative distributed software framework that will support easy creation of collaborative work environments for distributed knowledge workers and teams in collaborative design and engineering tasks;
- Validate the distributed software framework for creating different classes of collaborative working styles required for collaborative design and engineering in the Aerospace, Automotive and Construction sectors.
Expected Impact
The research advances in CoSpaces will push the state-of-the-art of collaborative work environments in several key areas:
- New collaboration models addressing the development and deployment of collaborative technologies that empower workers and teams and having a strong human factors and business focus.
- A practical collaborative software framework for supporting dynamic organisations that are executing complex processes in order to produce complex products.
- Uncovering and addressing real-world constraints and barriers to bridge the gap between industrial engineers and scientific researchers in collaborative working.
- Industry workspaces and interfaces based on deploying virtual interface technologies, leading to more practical and usable interfaces for real-world problems and users.
