The goal of the Distributed Collaboratories Project is to research, develop, and deploy the technologies needed to advance distributed collaboratory environments. This project is providing the mechanisms for sites to collaborate on scientific experiments by providing remote access to experimental facilities and allowing experiment control and monitoring from the home sites of researchers.
The scientific collaboratory environment is composed of many software components that work together to provide information, control, and a sense of presence to the remote researcher. These components have included the tools and infrastructures needed to provide:
Through our experience in building collaboratories, we realized that collaboratory tool development has significantly lagged behind the users' needs. Current tools in use by the collaboratories were largely developed for use in other applications or were developed to work in isolation. In order to be better suited for the collaboratory environment, these tools require modification. For example, although the multicast-based videoconferencing tools have been in use for several years, they are mainly effective for broadcasting content and for one-to-one interaction. They provide minimal rendezvous and launch capabilities and no coordination capabilities. These tools are primarily viable for the broadcasting of lectures and seminars; the more demanding collaboratory environment needs more functionality. A collaborator must be able to dynamically activate a videoconference session, invite the other participants to join, and carry on useful discussions with everyone participating equally. There are many additional tools needed to make this sort of capability a reality. These include conference management, floor control, remote camera control, and remote control of the audio and video tools themselves.
Several videoconference enhancement tools are under development within the Distributed Collaboratories Project. We have developed and deployed a large number of these components into the collaboratory environment and are integrating them into the daily routine of the scientist.
Another area where collaboratory tool development has lagged behind the needs of users is in tool integration. The collaboratory environment combines a large number of tools with a variety of user interfaces, communication requirements, and security requirements. The tools do not currently interoperate so the user is forced to interact with each tool separately. We are working to implement and integrate the appropriate glue components that will allow these tools to be used in a unified and interoperable environment.
Our core program is supported by the Office of Energy Research, Office of Computation and Technology Research, Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences Division, of the U. S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098 with the University of California.
Software Distribution Site Background
Related Work
Project Summary
Current Status and Future Plans
Telepathology Prototype
Spectro-Microscopy Prototype Publications, Presentations, and
Demonstrations
Marcia Perry
Chris Wagner
Karlo Berket
 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Home Page. |
 Distributed Systems Department Home Page. |
Collaboration Technologies Home Page |
This document was last updated on February 23, 2000, and is located at http://www-itg.lbl.gov/Collaboratories/sci-collab.html.
To report Web page problems, e-mail webmaster-george@george.lbl.gov. To request further information about Distributed System Department activities, e-mail DAAgarwal@lbl.gov.
Credits: Distributed Collaboratories research and development is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences Division. Support Credits identify the funding sources and the organizational context of the work described in this document.
Privacy and site security notice to Users
This document is LBNL Report #37331, Deb Agarwal ( DAAgarwal@lbl.gov) and Marcia Perry ( MPerry@lbl.gov) are responsible for this WWW document.