SBIR PHASE I: A Blackboard-Based Collaboration Environment for Human Problem Solving

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目解决了当前可用的群件、会议和工作流软件中的弱点。这些软件系统正在改变20世纪90年代各组织的运作方式，为方便地输入和检索信息提供环境，在用户之间交流信息，并在工作流程软件的情况下跟踪其通过业务流程的流动。这些软件系统缺乏完整的机制，用于动态控制它们所支持的协作过程，并通知用户何时何地需要他们的贡献。相反，这种控制必须由单个用户集体提供或在工作流程中预先指定。需要“高端”协作软件工具，其功能将与今天的“大众市场”工具截然不同。这些高端工具将提供技术，用于处理更复杂的信息交换、参与者之间更具机会性的交互，以及对协作活动进行更智能的控制和监控。为了解决当前协作软件系统的局限性，建议将其应用于人类协作，这是一种为支持软件模块之间的机会性协作而开发的问题解决方法。该方法为协作软件提供了一种强大的核心技术--一种明确地处理与解决问题的单个贡献者分开的控制的技术。该项目将展示在计算机辅助人类协作环境中应用这种方法来集成软件“专家”的有效性。随着协作工具的广泛使用，控制协作过程将成为用户日益沉重的负担。这项拟议的研究通过调查具有显式控制能力的核心技术的使用，正面解决了这个问题。因此，协作将变得更有效(由于机会主义控制)，并减少负担(由于减少了对单个参与者的控制)。鉴于协作工具的跨行业使用，该项目的成果具有广泛的商业适用性。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses weaknesses in currently available groupware, conferencing, and workflow software. These software systems are changing the way organizations function in the l990s, by providing environments for conveniently entering and retrieving information, communicating it among users, and, in the case of workflow software, tracking its flow through business processes. Lacking in these software systems are integral mechanisms for dynamically controlling the collaborative processes they support and for informing users of where and when their contributions are needed. Instead, such control must be collectively supplied by the individual users or be pre-specified in workflow procedures. There is a need for `high-end` collaboration software tools which will have capabilities that are very distinct from today's `mass-market` tools. These high-end tools will provide technologies for handling more complex information exchanges, more opportunistic interactions among participants, and more intelligent control and monitoring of collaborative activities. To address the limitations of current collaboration software systems, It is proposed to apply to human collaboration, the problem-solving approach that was developed to support opportunistic collaboration among software modules. The approach provides a robust core technology for collaboration software -- one that explicitly deals with control separate from the individual problem-solving contributors. This project will demonstrate the effectiveness of applying such an approach for integrating software `experts` in an environment for computer-assisted human collaboration. Controlling the collaboration process will become an increasing burden on users as the use of collaboration tools becomes pervasive. The proposed research addresses this problem head on, by investigating the use of a core technology with explicit control capabilities. As a result, collaboration will become more effective (due to opportunistic control) and less burdensome (due to the reduced control required from individual participants). Given the cross-industry use of collaboration tools, the results of this project have wide commercial applicability.