Enabling Team Collaboration with Pervasive & Mobile Computing [Kajewski, QUT] 2002-057-C

Project participants and team members		Stephen Kajewski
John Holland	Justin Lee
Woods Bagot	David Marchant
Queensland University of Technology	Sugiharto Alwi, Stephen Kajewski (Project Leader)
University of Sydney	Andy Dong, Brian Lee, Mary Lou Maher
Central Node	Melissa James

This project has two streams that consider the use of pervasive computing technologies in two very different contexts. The first context is the on-site (construction site) deployment of mobile computing devices. The second context is the use and development of intelligent rooms based on sensed environments and new human-computer interfaces (HCI) for collaboration in the design office. Together, these two streams present a model of team collaboration that relies on continuous communication to people and information to reduce information leakage.

Mobile computing
This part of the project aims to improve the costly and time-consuming process of data collection and analysis/processing at the interface between physical site operations, construction management activities and consultancy practice project activities that are generally considered by contractors and consultants to be tedious and error-prone due to extensive information leakage. We will examine recent developments in ICT with a view to adopting a limited range of mobile ICT and associated industry-specific software applications. Such ICT will allow the contractor and consultant real-time interaction with the collaborative Internet-based project portal and the information contained therein. The associated software applications will allow many of the more repetitive project administration and communication activities to be more easily captured in an electronic format, thus eliminating the requirement for extensive manual data re-entry, processing, and communication.

Pervasive computing in the design office
This part of the project aims to improve the way that designers interact with other people and the complex information that is developed as part of a design project. We will identify and integrate specific devices that enable an initial pervasive computing environment that enhance the interaction between people and computers. This knowledge will lead to the development of a sensed computing environment that allows people to interact with construction information through speech and gesture. Our initial efforts will consider devices such a light table that allows one or more designers to interact with information projected on a table. This can be extended in following projects to allow people to interact with information projected on any selected part of a room or its contents. The outcomes of this part of the project include a specification of an interactive light table suitable for building design, an analysis of its use, and a proposal for extending these concepts to an intelligent room.