Animated Work Envirionment [AWE]

动画工作环境 [AWE]

• 批准号: 0534423
• 负责人: Keith Green
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Clemson University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-12-01 至 2009-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0534423&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Animated; Work; Envirionment; AWE

A recent trend in the nature, place and organization of working life in the United States is the growing complexity of work, the emergence of new working populations (older workers, under-skilled workers, telecommuters and flexible shift workers), and the increasing likelihood that people will work, at least part-time, at home. As the home becomes more an office, the office is becoming more a home, where "hot desks," lounges, sofas, WI-FI and internal networks often replace cubicles and hard-wired workstations. These dramatic transformations in the nature of work, combined with unprecedented new technologies associated with working life, suggest a re-evaluation of the relations between workers, their technologies and their work environments, and a redesign of the work environment itself as a socially and technologically responsive system occupying both home and office. In that spirit, the focus of this project is on a critical aspect of the "intelligent" work environment: the physical workspace itself. The PI and his team will design, prototype, demonstrate and evaluate an "Animated Work Environment" (AWE), an articulated, programmable, interior environment accommodating a range of digital technologies that the PI expects will facilitate productivity, connectedness and innovation across fluid assemblages of people working with both analog and digital materials in a wide variety of locations and settings. Featuring a continuous, morphing surface controlled by a user-friendly interface, AWE will both couple to and complement the efforts of other investigators, who continue to realize promising components of the "intelligent" work environment such as projectors, screens, tablets, sensors, actuators and other digital devices. This research will advance knowledge and understanding in both architecture and computer and information science and engineering, by defining the "robot as a room" and the "room as a robot." The need to "program the room" will both stimulate and be enabled by existing and ongoing efforts in IT and "intelligent environments."Broader Impacts: This research, to be conducted and broadly disseminated by four investigators representing four disciplines - architecture, robotics, sociology and human factors psychology - with the active involvement of graduate and undergraduate students, including those from underrepresented groups, will expand the vision of researchers, developers and manufacturers of information technologies to recognize the physical environment as an integral and necessary part of the dynamic interaction between people and IT. Project outcomes will include a working prototype of a technologically advanced work environment aiming to increase satisfaction, participation, connectedness and productivity across working populations that might otherwise work inefficiently, unhappily, or not at all. This work is innovative, also, from a sociological point of view, for its reconsideration of the workplace. As the nature of work has changed in recent decades, sociologists have focused their attention on the impact of these changes on the social relations of production. This project takes a new perspective, emphasizing the material workplace as part and parcel of the changing social relations of production.

美国工作生活的性质、地点和组织方面最近的一个趋势是，工作越来越复杂，出现了新的工作人口（老年工人、技术不熟练的工人、远程办公者和灵活轮班工人），人们越来越有可能在家工作，至少是兼职工作。 随着家庭越来越像办公室，办公室也越来越像家庭，“热桌”、休息室、沙发、WI-FI和内部网络经常取代办公桌和硬连线工作站。 工作性质的这些巨大转变，加上与工作生活相关的前所未有的新技术，建议重新评估工人、他们的技术和工作环境之间的关系，并重新设计工作环境本身，使其成为一个社会和技术响应系统占据家庭和办公室。 本着这种精神，这个项目的重点是“智能”工作环境的一个关键方面：物理工作空间本身。 PI和他的团队将设计，原型，演示和评估“动画工作环境”（AWE），这是一个铰接，可编程的内部环境，可容纳一系列数字技术，PI预计将促进人们在各种地点和设置中使用模拟和数字材料的流体组合的生产力，连通性和创新。 AWE拥有一个由用户友好界面控制的连续变形表面，它将与其他研究人员的努力相结合并相互补充，这些研究人员将继续实现“智能”工作环境中有前途的组件，如投影仪，屏幕，平板电脑，传感器，执行器和其他数字设备。 这项研究将通过定义“机器人作为房间”和“房间作为机器人”来推进建筑学、计算机和信息科学与工程学的知识和理解。对“房间编程”的需求将刺激IT和“智能环境”中现有的和正在进行的努力，并使其成为可能。“更广泛的影响：这项研究将由代表四个学科的四名研究人员进行并广泛传播-建筑学，机器人学，社会学和人为因素心理学-研究生和本科生的积极参与，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体，将扩大研究人员的视野，信息技术的开发商和制造商认识到物理环境是人与人之间动态互动的一个组成部分和必要部分，项目成果将包括一个技术先进的工作环境的工作原型，旨在提高工作人群的满意度，参与度，连通性和生产力，否则可能会工作效率低下，不愉快，或根本没有。 从社会学的角度来看，这项工作也具有创新性，因为它重新思考了工作场所。 由于近几十年来工作的性质发生了变化，社会学家将注意力集中在这些变化对社会生产关系的影响上。 该项目采取了一个新的视角，强调物质工作场所是不断变化的社会生产关系的一部分。