Braccetto is a collaborative project in human-machine interaction. It aims to develop sophisticated information sharing technology that can help geographically distributed teams collaborate more effectively.
Braccetto, meaning ‘arm in arm’ in Italian,is researching the principles underlying effective remote collaboration. The results of this investigation may provide new ways of supporting geographically dispersed teams involved in creative activities such as collaborative design, planning, analysis and decision making.
The project is developing new methods for supporting simultaneous work on software applications between sites in conjunction with tightly linked, high-quality, multi-party telepresence technology. The project will evaluate how these methods improve the productivity of teams and team members’ awareness of co-workers.
What will this research achieve?
While the increasing use of ICT in business environments has delivered significant productivity benefits, it has also brought challenges for information workers. Many people struggle with information overload and find it hard to extract useful insights from the huge amounts of information they process each day.
In addition, the nature of global business means people often need to work as part of geographically dispersed teams. Organisations are looking to improve the way employees interact and create environments that encourage effective collaboration and knowledge sharing, even across large distances.
Braccetto intends to develop technologies to support people in their interactions with each other. Insights and intellectual property developed by the project will be evaluated for use in areas such as national security, emergency management and distributed scientific research, and to benefit the Australian economy.
Who will benefit?
Outcomes will have application in a wide range of industries where geographically dispersed creative teamwork is undertaken. This may include post-production, mining and mineral exploration, defence planning, infrastructure design and planning, manufacturing design and distributed scientific teams.
What are the key features?
Braccetto will create new models of human-computer interaction and will run a series of experiments to validate hypotheses from these models. Results will contribute to human-computer interaction theory. New concepts will be implemented from these models to improve criteria such as productivity, performance and team effectiveness between remote co-workers.
This will result in an integrated telepresence software platform, supporting two to three users at multiple sites. As part of the interface overlaying any applications (such as Microsoft Word, CAD or video editors) every user will have his or her own cursor and simultaneous control.
The team is investigating a range of mixed presence groupware capabilities including a national research and transitioning platform called Braccetto TeamNets. The research includes awareness approaches and tools such as: ambient awareness interfaces; new interaction devices; integrated telepresence approaches such as the use of spatial audio; low latency audio codecs and high-definition video; operating system-level multi-input and multimodal interaction.
For more information, please visit the HxI Initiative website.
Research team:
Professor Peter Eades - HxI Research Director
Belinda Kellar - HxI Project Manager
Markus Rittenbruch – NICTA Project Leader
Gregor McEwan – Research Engineer
Participants: The project includes researchers at DSTO, CSIRO, the University of South Australia and the University of Sydney. The key representatives from these organisations are:
Tim Pattison – Head, Human Interaction Capabilities, DSTO
Peter Evdokiou – Manager, Experimental Research Systems, DSTO
Dr Claudia Schremmer - Research Scientist, CSIRO
Alex Krumm-Heller – Telecollaboration Project Leader, CSIRO
Professor Bruce Thomas - Director of the Wearable Computer Laboratory, The University of South Australia
Dr Masa Takatsuka - Director of the Visualization and High-Performance Computing Laboratory, The University of Sydney
An initial version of [braccetto] TeamNets, a suite of hardware, software and content elements that can be rapidly deployed into a range of distributed collaboration systems has been developed. TeamNets currently incorporates a CSIRO’s telepresence network technologies, [braccetto] multi-input synchronous distributed application sharing capabilities, and DSTO’s LiveSpaces Operating Environment which coordinates and controls services and applications within and between distributed sites, and automation capabilities to support rapid set up and use, and new interaction capabilities that support user operation through interactive touch screen displays.
From a hardware perspectuve the braccetto research team from CSIRO, DSTO and NICTA have developed with a small Perth based small to medium enterprise a modular collaborative workspaces environment which incorporates high definition Liquid crystal displays (LCD) that can be arranged in various combinations and orientations using computer controlled motors. The workstations have been designed to allow customization for various situations and user groups and can be quickly packed away into transport cases for rapid deployment in the field.
TeamNets is being currently used as the main collaboration tool by the HxI [braccetto] project team, which has members across 5 sites in Adelaide and Sydney. This team is conducting research into mixed presence groupware, workspace awareness, and new ICT-enabled experimentation approaches.
Initial domain experimentation program has commenced with [braccetto] TeamNets being deployed to support large-scale planning activities in the defence environment in 2006 and further experimentation exercises in eResearch and national security are being planned for 2007.
The braccetto team has also been working with other research institutions in Australia, such as the Australian Centre for Interaction Design (ACID) to explore future collaboration system designs for intense distributed collaboration environments.
Publications
Rittenbruch, M & McEwan, G (2007) Awareness Survey: A Historical Reflection of Awareness in Collaboration", HxI Technical Report, 21 March.
Rittenbruch, M & McEwan, G (2007) A Historical Reflection of Awareness in Collaboration", Springer book chapter, submitted for Publication.Schremmer, C., Krumm-Heller, A., Vernik, R., Epps, J. (2007). Design Discussion of the [braccetto] Research Platform: Supporting Distributed Intensely Collaborating Creative Teams of Teams. Invited paper in: HCI International 2007, 22-27 July 2007, Beijing, PR China.
Vernik, R.J., Kellar, B., Epps, J., Schremmer, C. (2007) A Reference Model for Collaborative Research into ICT-Augmented Human Activity In Proceedings of Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC), Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Jan 30 - Feb 2.
Schremmer, C., Epps, J., Vernik, R. (2006). Distributed Intense Collaborative Interaction – Research Challenges in eResearch. In Proc. 20th HCI conference 2006, Queen Mary, University of London, 11-15 September 2006. Volume 2, p260, ISSN1470-5559. Workshop "Combining Visualisation and Interaction to Facilitate Scientific Exploration and Discovery".
Vernik, R.J., Epps, J., Schremmer, C. (2007) The 'x' Factor in Human Interacctivity In Proc. International Conference on CSCW in Design (CSCWD), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, April 26 - 28.
Vernik, R.J., Krumm-Heller, A., Evdokiou, P., Epps, J., Phillips, M., Johnson, S., Weber, D. (2006) A Reference Architecture for [braccetto] Composable Collaboration Systems In Proc. Australasian Computer Human Interaction Conference (OzCHI). Sydney, Australia. November 20 - 24.