Support for Distributed Collaboration in theDismounted Incident Collaboration Environment

Social Web + Agents + Plans + Virtual Worlds

3D Views onto the InternetSocial NetworkingContent ManagementInstant MessagingIntelligent AgentsSemantic WebWeb ServicesCommunity KnowledgeVoIPTeleconferencingCollaborative SystemsAgent Presence

Project to provide a Virtual Collaboration Environment for the WoSCR Community

Whole of Society Crisis Response Community

Cognitive Work Analysis of Requirements and Technologies

Virtual Collaboration Environment: Web-based portal Virtual interaction space Community tools including I-Room Collaboration protocol

USJFCOM, US ARL HRED, CMU, U.Virginia, U.Edinburgh, Perigean Technologies

Cognitive Work AnalysisVicente, K. J. (1999) Cognitive Work Analysis

OpenVCE Portal Roles of Elements

Collaboration Tools Roles of Elements

Web Pages definitive edited content and index pages (editorial control)

News and Calendar Activity Awareness

Discussion Forums threaded discussions within community

Wiki community knowledge creation and refinement

Blogs individual web logs

Status current activity

Comments can be added to most elements

I-Room: Mixed-initiative Collaboration

Truly distributed mixed initiative collaboration and task support is the focus of the I-Room, allowing for the following tasks:situation monitoringsense-makinganalysis and simulationplanningoption analysisbriefingdecision makingresponsive enactment

Sensing andSituation AnalysisPlanning, EvaluationOption ArgumentationBriefing andDecision MakingActing, Reactingand CommunicationCentralMeetingArea

3D Space via Adobe Connect for Web Observers2008-2010 HarmonieWeb -> 2012 APAN

OpenVCE for the Dismounted IncidentCollaboration Environment (DICE)

Web Portal Simplification

Revisit Use of Moodle VLE for Quizzes, etc

Virtual Worlds Space SimplificationUncluttered I-Room in MOSES/OpenSim

Second Life -> OpenSim -> Collada -> Unity3D

Virtual Worlds Space SimplificationTrying Unity3D in Web Browser

http://openvce.net

****Army Research Laboratory Human Research & Engineering Directorate (ARL HRED)****VCE Region in Second Life**VCE Region in Second Life**Venue@VCE Amphitheatre in Second Life*Expo Pavilion in Second Life*I-Zone on http://OpenVCE.net******I-Room arranged as 4 work areas around a central meeting area, specialised to support a range of functions in decision making, e.g. for operations centres.***OpenVCE.net WoSCR Community Experiment in Progress Feb 2010***OpenVCE web portal showing support for Virtual Collaboration protocol alongside virtual 3D meeting space**Title: Intelligent Virtual Spaces for Intelligent Collaboration

Keywords: Intelligent Systems, Knowledge Systems, ArtificialIntelligence, Planning, Command and Control, Collaborative Systems,Emergency Response, Virtual Worlds

Abstract:

Our long term aim is to contribute to a future "Helpful Environment"by supporting the creation and use of task-centric virtualorganisations involving people, government and non-governmentalorganisations, automated systems, grid and web services workingalongside intelligent robotic, vehicle, building and environmentalsystems to respond to very dynamic events on scales from local toglobal.

Our "I-X" platform and its "" conceptual model provide thebasis for knowledge about objectives, capabilities, tasks, activities,plans and behaviour to be shared in a mixed-initiative environmentinvolving teams of people, computing services and robot/sensorequipment. The technology is rooted in flexible knowledge-richartificial intelligence planning methods and has contributed to thedevelopment of standards for shared plan and process representations.

The focus of the current work is on an "intelligent room" or"knowledgeable room" to act as a knowledge aid to supportcollaborative teleconferences and meetings initially but later toprovide a knowledge assistant in any location a user wishes viawhatever presentation and communications methods are appropriate. Theproject is a base for a range of collaborative developments, plug-ins,and projects. Initial work is focused on the creation of a VirtualCollaboration Center in a virtual world environment such as SecondLife.

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Biography:

Home Page: http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/Project Page: http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/project/plan/

Prof Austin Tate holds the Chair in Knowledge-Based Systems at theUniversity of Edinburgh and is the Director of the ArtificialIntelligence Applications Institute at the University. He helped formAIAI in 1984 and since that time has led its efforts to transfer thetechnologies and methods of artificial intelligence and knowledgesystems into commercial, governmental and academic applicationsthroughout the world. He holds degrees in Computer Studies (B.A.Lancaster, 1972) and Machine Intelligence (Ph.D. Edinburgh, 1975). Heis a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland's NationalAcademy), and is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement ofArtificial Intelligence amongst other honours. He is a professionallyChartered Engineer.

Prof. Tate's research interests are in the use of rich process andplan representations along with tools that can utilize theserepresentations to support planning and activity management. Hepioneered the early, now widely used and deployed, approaches tohierarchical planning and constraint satisfaction in the Interplan,Nonlin and O-Plan planning systems. His recent work called "I-X" ismore concerned with supporting collaboration between human and systemagents to perform cooperative tasks. Prof. Tate was the Edinburgh PIin the Advanced Knowledge Technologies Interdisciplinary ResearchCollaboration funded by EPSRC. He also led the DARPA funded CoalitionAgent eXperiment (CoAX) project involving some 30 organizations in 4countries over a 3 year period. His work is being applied to searchand rescue and emergency response tasks. He is Chief Technical Officerof I-C2 Systems, a company seeking to develop advanced aids foremergency response. His internationally sponsored research work isfocused on emergency response and involves advanced knowledge andplanning technologies, and collaborative systems especially usingvirtual worlds. He leads the Virtual University of Edinburgh, Vue, avirtual educational and research institute bringing together thoseinterested in the use of virtual worlds for teaching, research andoutreach. Prof. Tate is on the Senior Advisory Board for IEEEIntelligent Systems journal and is a member of the editorial board ofa number of other journals.

--------------------------------------------Short Biography:

Austin Tate is Director of the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) and holds the Personal Chair of Knowledge-Based Systems at the University of Edinburgh. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland's National Academy), Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of AI, Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a member of the editorial board of a number of AI journals. His internationally sponsored research work is focused on emergency response and involves advanced knowledge and planning technologies, and collaborative systems especially using virtual worlds.

Longer bios at various lengths can be found at http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/

**VCE Region in Second Life**VCE Region in Second Life**VCE Region in Second Life**VCE Region in Second Life**VCE Region in Second Life*Army Research Laboratory Human Research & Engineering Directorate (ARL HRED)