Document-centric mixed reality for connecting remote workgroups

这项研究将把物理世界和数字世界混合在一起，以远距离连接团队工作空间。在使用虚拟世界将远程合作者连接到物理工作空间中的组的先前工作的基础上，此研究计划将考虑抽象的3-D文档空间如何促进涉及不同物理房间中的多个工作面的组到组协作。例如，可以链接两个物理工作空间中的数字桌面以共享、分类和编辑文档，并且可以链接每个房间中的白板以促进集思广益，而3D文档空间跟踪文档在链接的桌面和链接的白板之间以及到便携式设备上的移动。研究将确定3-D文档空间是否减轻了相互连接的物理空间之间的布局差异的影响，并提供了一种与房间无关但在空间上有关联的方式来准备协作工作，记录其流程和结果。这种远距离协作的方法不会将协作减少到单一显示器(与大多数视频会议和桌面群件一样)，也不会限制房间布局或用人工环境来取代它以实现协同呈现的感觉(与大多数身临其境的解决方案一样)。它促进了不同工作空间(如会议室和实验室)之间的临时连接，并在环境意识很重要时(例如，当总部的股票经纪人与在俯瞰市场大厅的房间中的同事共享销售数据时)允许远程团队之间的协作。在一个数字技术与物理世界日益融合的社会中，了解我们对建筑环境的体验如何影响技术使用是至关重要的。在将协作工作空间的物理布局作为研究重点的过程中，该研究计划通过将调查转向生态上有效的工作环境，显著扩展了以前在数字中介工作空间中用于远程协作的工作。

This research will mix the physical and digital worlds to connect group workspaces across distances. Building on prior work that used a virtual world to connect remote collaborators to a group in a physical workspace, this research program will consider how an abstract 3-D document space can facilitate group-to-group collaboration involving multiple work surfaces in different physical rooms. For example, digital tabletops in two physical workspaces can be linked in order to share, sort and edit documents, and whiteboards in each room can be linked to promote brainstorming, while the 3-D document space tracks the movement of documents between the linked tabletop and the linked whiteboard, and onto portable devices. Research will determine whether the 3-D document space mitigates the effects of layout differences between connected physical spaces, and provides a "room-agnostic" but spatially-linked way to prepare for collaborative work, record its flow and outcomes. This approach to collaboration across distances does not reduce collaboration to a single display (as with most videoconferencing and desktop groupware), and does not constrain room layout or replace it with an artificial environment to achieve the perception of co-presence (as with most immersive solutions). It promotes ad hoc connectivity between heterogeneous workspaces such as a meeting room and a lab, and allows collaboration between remote teams when environmental awareness is important (e.g., when stock brokers in the head office share sales figures with colleagues who are in a room overlooking the market floor). In a society that increasingly integrates digital technology with the physical world, it is critical to understand how our experience of the built environment impacts technology use. In making the physical layout of collaborative workspaces a research focus, this research program notably extends previous work in digitally-mediated workspaces for remote collaboration, by moving inquiry toward ecologically valid work environments.