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

这个小企业创新研究阶段I项目解决了当前可用的群件、会议和工作流软件中的弱点。这些软件系统通过提供方便输入和检索信息的环境，在用户之间进行交流，以及在工作流软件的情况下，通过业务流程跟踪其流程，正在改变组织在20世纪90年代的运作方式。在这些软件系统中，缺乏动态控制它们所支持的协作过程的完整机制，以及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共同提供，或者在工作流过程中预先指定。对“高端”协作软件工具的需求将与今天的“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，参与者之间更多的机会互动，以及更智能的控制和监控协作活动。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，这是为支持软件模块之间的机会性协作而开发的解决问题的方法。这种方法为协作软件提供了一种健壮的核心技术——一种显式地处理独立于个人问题解决贡献者的控制的技术。该项目将展示应用这种方法在计算机辅助的人类协作环境中集成软件“专家”的有效性。随着协作工具的普及，控制协作过程将成为用户日益增加的负担。提出的研究通过研究具有显式控制功能的核心技术的使用，正面解决了这个问题。因此，合作将变得更有效（由于机会主义控制）和更少的负担（由于个体参与者所需的控制减少）。鉴于协作工具的跨行业使用，这个项目的结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.