Telecooperation Through Shared & Integrated Collaborative and Distributed Intelligent Environments Supporting Mixed Realities

This paper introduces new telecooperation paradigm that support collaboration among a group of geographically dispersed people and intelligent autonomous systems. Distance, time and distribution are the main attributes of the developed telecooperation paradigm. Telecooperation has been realized through 3D, multi user, interactive, and seamless shared and integrated collaborative and distributed intelligent environment (CoDIE) that support mixed realities by merging the physical reality and virtuality. The developed environment has been used as a metaphor to support synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and to enable people to work beyond time and physical constraints. CoDIE has been featured to support parallel and distributed teleoperation and collaborative control. The paper presents the key features of CoDIE and the key functionalities associated with each of its main elements within its architecture. In addition, the paper highlights the efforts in developing three prototypes that use CoDIE as main platform

1. Introduction

The increase in the power and interactive capabilities of hand held, portable and wearable computing devices, and the technological development originated in the growth of mobile telecommunications through cellular and satellite infrastructure provide the possibility to have wide ranging and continual access to computing and other resources in a variety of contexts. The progress and the quality of information and communication technologies and infrastructures of networking along with multimedia facilities and multi-modal interfacing enabled by the explosive growth in computing power and connectivity, address the issue of universal connectivity and global access to information for wide range of applications. The evolution of information technology and the quality of modern communication technologies are infiltrating our lives, and imposing new structures and linkages not only on human living physical environment but also on human life, working habit and on the internal ecology. Such changes will not only cover gathering and exchanging information but also will cover the way to do business, education, research, medical treatment, space missions, consultation, manufacturing, etc. [1], [2]. Theses changes are forcing us to revolutionize the way towards a rethinking of the physical structures and spaces needed for living, reshaping relationships among professionals and organizations, working, and learning as the need to look for alternative forms of physical movement of people, equipment, records and information, etc. is evolving. Many of human physiological and psychological functions have to adapt and respond to new imperatives.