ACCESSFABRIK

Researching and Developing New Tools for

Collaborative Design and Communication

Michael J. Murphy

Hochschule der Medien, Nobelstrasse 10, Stuttgart, 70569, Germany

Michael Dick, Michael Lawrie

Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St., Toronto, Ontario, M5B 2K3, Canada

Keywords: Collaboration, Engineering Design, Videoconferencing, 3D Visualization, Telework, Cross-Cultural

Communication, Translation, Access Grid.

Abstract: Through a review of literature and experimentation with enabling technologies, it was concluded that the

Access Grid (an open-source, videoconferencing platform) held significant potential to facilitate the sharing

of audiovisual material in the area of collaborative industrial design; however, it would have to be extended

to allow for high-definition visualization and remote desktop control. As a result, researchers in Canada and

Germany developed new tools to accomplish this, and utilized them to remotely manipulate industrial

designs in real-time and with very low latency. Additionally, automated captioning and translation services

were developed to better facilitate cross-cultural business-to-business collaboration. Future research

directions for this project involve the continued prototyping of these tools, leading either to their

deployment within industry or further improvement within the Access Grid Community.

1 INTRODUCTION

This paper partially serves as a “technology

roadmap” for an international joint research

initiative of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada

and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial

Engineering (Fraunhofer IAO) in Stuttgart,

Germany. The overall purpose of the project was to

study the impact of emerging and convergent web

and broad-based communications technologies on

collaborative industrial design and manufacturing.

Our primary work focused on creating new tools to

better facilitate collaborative design and

engineering, and this involved extending the Access

Grid (AG), a robust, open-source videoconferencing

platform, to bridge geographic divides in the design

process. We also sought to reduce cultural barriers

to communication through automated captioning and

translation services; in doing this, we hoped to

further enhance international business-to-business

collaboration.

Although the focus here is on improving

distributed collaborative visualization, this project

also sought to make the collaborative process more

“intelligent” using semantic web services and a

combined technology known as the “semantic grid”.

However, due to space constraints, we are not able

to discuss this aspect of the project at length within,

but have instead relegated such material to a

separate paper (see Murphy, Dick, & Fischer, 2008).

It is also important to note that our work was

primarily focused on the impact to industrial design

and manufacturing projects to meet the immediate

needs of our industrial partners. However, we do

consider other applications outside this domain

where possible, including usage of the Access Grid

to improve visualization in healthcare, the natural

sciences, and distance education.

In section 2, we outline our inspiration for this

project, namely the current state of the Canadian

automotive sector and broader trends in

videoconferencing adoption and predicted adoption

that we can ameliorate through the development of

new technology. The Access Grid, other forms of

distributed and collaborative visualization (and

implementations thereof within and outside of the

533

Murphy M., Dick M. and Lawrie M.

ACCESSFABRIK - Researching and Developing New Tools for Collaborative Design and Communication.

DOI: 10.5220/0001839505330539

In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2009), page

ISBN: 978-989-8111-81-4

engineering domain) are the focus of section 3.

Building off this, we then detail the work researchers

on this project have completed thus far in improving

such environments in section 4, while areas for

future work are presented in section 5. General

conclusions (section 6), and a list of references will

complete the paper.

2 INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVES

First, we consider some details on the automotive

sector in Canada (as informed by our industrial

partners, who contribute to the GDP of this

industry). We will then proceed with a brief look at

how collaborative visualization and shared-space

tools have evolved to meet new industrial trends,

most notably in the realm of videoconferencing.

2.1 The Canadian Automotive Sector

According to the Conference Board of Canada, $111

billion worth of autos and auto parts were produced

in this country in 2005, utilizing 1.5 per cent of the

total workforce. Nevertheless, anticipated risks,

particularly increases in the cost of materials by as

much as six per cent through 2010, have significant

potential to minimize the Gross Domestic Product of

key players if methods for managing the design and

manufacturing process do not evolve in the coming

years (Conference Board of Canada, 2006).

Certainly, the ever-present economic difficulties

faced by auto manufacturers and the sectors that

supply parts for them has been well-documented in

the popular press in recent years and is, in essence,

common knowledge.

The fact that trends also indicate increasing

interdependency amongst parts manufacturers,

suppliers and automotive manufacturers/assemblers

only exacerbate the financial risks described above.

More specifically, the Conference Board notes that

parts manufacturers in particular are, in some cases,

taking a leadership role in actually designing

products for their customers, rather than simply

manufacturing items to the automaker’s

specifications (2006). In other words, it is becoming

more commonplace for the auto manufacturer to

outsource the design process to the component’s

manufacturer. Logically, there are cost-savings

attached to this move, but risk presents itself in the

form of collaboration in that the automaker and parts

manufacturer must bridge geographical,

technological and even linguistic and cultural

divides in order to ensure the industrial design and

manufacturing process proceeds to each party’s

specifications and requirements. There is little room

for ineffective communication and collaboration in

the just-in-time environment that defines this sector,

since errors in design, and the time taken to correct

them, can spread through the supply chain quickly.

In essence, this changing economic model is

dependent on the collaborative process as being an

asset, rather than a liability – this is the impetus for

our work with the Access Grid.

2.2 The Impact of Videoconferencing

Technology advancing to meet the new economics

of industrial design, manufacturing, engineering and

procurement in the automotive sector is also at the

core of this research project and paper. As

mentioned, we will look at the progress made thus

far on the Access Grid as the technology is

introduced; however, it is important to consider the

state of the broader technologies upon which related

concepts and applications are derived. Specifically,

we must first consider to what extent

videoconferencing, distributed and collaborative

computing and new web services are being adopted

by our primary end-users.

In their most recent reports, the Gartner Group, a

leading corporate research firm, notes that the

concept of “ubiquitous collaboration” may have a

“transformational” impact when it reaches its

plateau of mainstream adoption in five to ten years

(2006). Videoconferencing, presence and open-

source team collaboration are also purporting

beneficial change, although the timeframe to

adoption is predicted to be less than five years. This

essentially means the time is ideal for mainstream

organizations to consider deploying collaborative

visualization tools, such as the AG, as the cost to

benefit ratio is high: investment now will position

the company ahead of competitors and give them an

edge when the technology becomes commonplace in

future. We consider this a favourable analysis and

have thus proceeded to review and refine research

agendas concerning this ICT accordingly.

3 THE ACCESS GRID

The Access Grid (AG) is a robust, open-source

videoconferencing platform that is a suitable

solution for the level of distributed and collaborative

visualization required in this project; as such, we

hypothesized that it would prove to be a key

enabling technology to meet the challenges

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described above. In this section, we will: present

background information on visualization and

presentation environments; trace the history of the

Access Grid and outline its operation; describe

similarities and differences to commercially-

available videoconferencing systems; show how the

technology has been adopted in a variety of

industries; discuss the necessity to extend the Access

Grid to enable collaborative engineering and, as

such, the requirement to consider integration with

new web and other technologies.

3.1 Visualization Environments

Tools such as the Access Grid are rooted in the

broader discipline of computer visualization

techniques. Visualization can be thought of as

“distributed” (data processing is spread over

different computers to improve performance, the

notion of “Grid computing”), “collaborative”

(audiovisual communication, shared whiteboard

applications, etc. – the notion of computer supported

cooperative work, or CSCW) or a combination of

both (Brodlie, Duce, Gallop, Walton, & Wood,

2004). Visualization can be further distinguished by

the presentation environment and viewing

experience: constrained technology and bandwidth

provides for the ever-familiar “postage stamp”

quality one often finds in streaming video, while

improving quality has made the “television

experience” more commonplace in

videoconferencing platforms; the “theatre

experience” offers greater depth and user-

engagement, while the “immersive experience” is

tantamount to all-out telepresence or even virtual

reality, in which a virtual environment envelops the

user so that he or she may grasp subtle nuances of

imagery such as texture (Mayer, 1997 as cited in

Brodlie et al., 2004). Generally speaking, the size of

the display correlates positively with the level of

quality, so long as the amount of bandwidth is

appropriate for the task at hand.

For our purposes, the Access Grid is both

“distributed” and “collaborative” as its purpose is to

allow interaction across a dispersed network

(geographically and in terms of resources) to shape

the final output. Further still, it can be classified as

providing something equivalent to a “theatre

experience”, as the present (and evolving)

technology allows for videoconferencing and shared

visualization within applications with considerable

fidelity, as will be discussed. However, it should be

noted that the AG is not a virtual

environment/“immersive experience” at present and,

with this project, we are not attempting to achieve

this (rather we are taking steps to make the

technology, as it is now, more applicable and usable

within the automotive sector and engineering

domain). Our usage of the AG here is representative

of presence, though it is admittedly not the most

appropriate example of all-out telepresence.

3.2 History, Components & Operation

The Access Grid was developed by researchers at

the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, an

organization that continues to provide the majority

of the momentum and coordination for the project

through annual retreats and a website,

www.accessgrid.org. Although use cases have

broadened over the years, and continue to through

our work, the AG was developed primarily as a

vehicle for researchers to share data and

videoconference over high speed, multicast

networks in ways that resemble face-to-face

collaboration, but also as an enabling technology for

remote education (Connolly, 2001).

At the heart of the Access Grid is a “node”, a

descriptor for each institution’s respective setup of

the technology that encompasses the hardware,

software and network on which it operates.

Hardware requirements for a node are neither

highly-specific nor proprietary; as such, the actual

needs of each end-user, as well as their budget, can

be taken into account in the design process. At a

minimum, the hardware must provide for two-

dimensional display space (larger screens are

preferred because they are key to the “theatre

experience” discussed previously), live video

camera transmissions and two-way audio (Conte,

2003). Generally speaking, this is best accomplished

through combinations of consumer video cameras,

microphones and projectors: for example, one node

at Ryerson University uses two table-mounted

microphones for audio pick-up, an echo cancellation

device, one to three high-definition camcorders to

provide different viewing angles and up to three

projectors controlled by computers to enable a

display screen of sufficient size. Regardless of the

specific hardware setup, software allows the node to

seek out and connect to other nodes over the AG; in

other words, the software is used to link a grid (or

network) of nodes so that each one may “access”

others as desired. The most important application

that facilitates this is referred to as the “venue

client”; it is written in Python, can be downloaded

for free from the Access Grid website and will run

on any of the major operating systems. Once logged

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in, the user can locate people of interest within a

specific venue (e.g. an online meeting space or

“lobby” which an institution has created) and engage

in the sharing of audio, video, text and application

data (the venue client can actually be considered a

“wrapper”, as it integrates stand-alone applications

like Jabber, Videoconferencing Tool (VIC) and

Robust Audio Tool (RAT) to enable text chat, video

and audio conferencing respectively). In spite of

generic hardware and rather simplistic software

requirements, the Access Grid does require a

specialized broadband network upon which to

operate. More specifically, the AG operates over

multicast networks (MBone) and generates at least

20 Mbps of traffic; by contrast, most Internet

Service Providers and many organizations limit their

Internet traffic to unicast (and with significantly less

speed) so as not to overwhelm routers in use today

(Hanss, 2001). The bandwidth and multicast

demands of the AG are what allow multipoint

collaboration, but also form an inherent limitation in

deploying the technology in broader settings due to

the limited availability of MBone combined with the

cost of bandwidth. An explanation for this disparity

between academia and industry may rest with the

fact that the AG, along with other experimental

digital video projects conceived under the moniker

of “Internet2”, was initially developed on the

assumption that such networks would be ubiquitous

in everyday computing in the near-future (Hanss,

2001; Simco, 2002). However, since this is not the

case within industry, we remain aware of this

limitation to the deployment of the Access Grid and

continue to look at ways deployment issues can be

overcome as they arise.

3.3 Relation to Videoconferencing

What makes the Access Grid so unique is its ability

to transform an entire room into a facility that allows

multiple people to videoconference with many

others simultaneously. It is, essentially, a software-

based solution to videoconferencing, since the venue

client leverages multicast network resources to allow

the sharing of whatever is at the other end of the

hardware components (that is, audio, video or

computer applications) with as many users as the

available bandwidth will allow. This sets the AG

apart from more well-known software-based

videoconferencing tools such as Microsoft

NetMeeting or your favourite instant messaging

client, since their focus is on point-to-point

communication (i.e. two people), albeit over a

unicast network and likely with even cheaper

hardware (while it is possible to operate an AG node

using a single webcam, it is contradictory to the goal

of using the technology for room-based

conferencing environments).

One similarity of all these software-based

methods (including the VIC application with the AG

toolkit) is that most rely on H.261 standards,

resulting in encoding and decoding that, while of

relatively high quality, is not broadcast-quality and

thus not appropriate for all applications. That said,

using the AG with sufficient bandwidth and quality

equipment does provide for a productive

videoconferencing experience and, perhaps more

importantly, in a multipoint environment. In our lab

at Ryerson, we are working to provide an alternative

to VIC, a VLC-based application that will provide

H.264 (part of MPEG-4) video transport for the AG,

thus resulting in broadcast-quality, high-definition-

capable visualization.

Before the Access Grid was introduced as a

software-based solution, multipoint conferencing

could only be achieved through proprietary, and

very expensive, hardware setups. Even now, many

companies are opting for multipoint control units

from vendors such as Polycom, VCON, Picture-Tel,

Radvision and HP, which cost $100,000 US or more,

depending on the number of simultaneous users

desired (since every participating location will

require similar conferencing equipment; Hanss,

2001). Even the AG itself has a direct commercial

counterpart, the inSORS Grid from inSORS

Integrated Communications, wherein the hardware,

software and network interface that would be

separate components of a node are combined into

one portable “magic box” that can be utilized when

needed by an organization (Brodlie et al., 2004).

While these “ready-made” solutions may seem

convenient for businesses, the time spent investing

in a customized Access Grid node is worthwhile

considering the cost savings and inherent flexibility.

For example, an engineering firm could design its

own AG node using off-the-shelf components most

appropriate for their collaborative needs with

considerably less capital investment; moreover, the

open-source nature of the AG would allow them to

modify software interfaces and add as many users as

their bandwidth allows on an as-needed basis for no

additional material cost. The initial investment in the

AG node thus provides a return on investment (ROI)

over time; moreover, since the node is largely based

on consumer and prosumer technologies, even these

initial capital costs will go down as the constituent

products become more popular and mainstream.

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3.4 Evolving Usage & Recent Events

The Access Grid has evolved over the past few years

to facilitate distributed collaboration and

communication in other fields. Even though it has

still not seen widespread adoption, some of the

arguments below combined with the low start-up

costs described above should prove valuable to

companies looking to make informed decisions

concerning the technology.

Limited usage of the Access Grid in healthcare

and various scientific fields demonstrates a clear

business case for adopting the technology, especially

in terms of long-term cost savings. Scientists at

Australian universities, for example, have combined

the AG with telepresence equipment to operate

equipment remotely: their first successful trials

allowed researchers in Melbourne to control an

expensive electron microscope in Sydney,

suggesting that sharing arrangements such as these

will allow the cost of expensive capital investments

to be defrayed by multiple parties (Luntz, 2005).

Usage of the AG in healthcare is also exemplary of

the technology’s ability to reduce the enduring costs

of time and opportunity by serving as an important

link in vital, time-critical situations.

While such examples do not directly involve the

automotive industry and/or the manufacturing

sector, the accessibility of the Access Grid with

respect to fulfilling urgent needs ad hoc should be

attractive to our target businesses, since the just-in-

time model permeates the entire supply chain and

mistakes can obviously be costly.

A final argument for adopting the Access Grid in

business involves an issue that is very much in

vogue – the environment. While travel, particularly

by air, will always remain a necessity for some

meetings and conferences, organizations are finding

it important to take steps to reduce their carbon

footprint by restricting such travel. However, this

need not reduce their ability to hold conferences,

since our previous discussion demonstrates that the

AG is a viable vehicle for international conferences

since it simulates in-person collaboration and

communication. Indeed, a genomics conference was

facilitated over the AG recently, and organizers

estimated that approximately 900 tonnes of travel-

related carbon dioxide emissions were averted based

on the number of participants and the distance they

would have travelled (presumably by airplane) to

reach the conference site in person (Reay, 2003).

And while this, in itself, is also a cost-savings for

any company as it reduces expensive travel, the

public relations benefit is, perhaps, greater;

therefore, the Access Grid serves both as a tool for

maximizing cost-effectiveness in the collaborative

process, as well as being an important conduit for

meeting corporate social responsibility objectives.

3.5 The Need for Future Extensions

As of this writing, 267 Access Grid nodes were in

use across 27 countries worldwide (AccessGrid.org,

2008). As discussed above, this number is likely to

grow (and span more industrial sectors) as the

reputation for the technology begins to solidify, thus

justifying the start-up expenses (however cost

effective they may already be). While the quality of

video and the availability of multicast

networks/bandwidth are some of the only general

limitations to the AG concept, its application to

industrial design, particularly in the automotive

sector, will be improved if extensions can be

developed to make the videoconferencing and

overall collaboration process more “intelligent” and

aware of the real-world impact of manipulating what

is being visualized on the manufacturing supply

chain. Semantic technologies – the semantic web

and semantic web services – are posited to be a

viable solution for meeting such a requirement to

extend the Access Grid (this is entrenched in the

concept of a “Semantic Services Broker” as

introduced in Fischer, Murphy, Tippmann, &

Ayromlou, 2006; see also Murphy & Fischer, 2006

for further explanation of the enabling technology).

As mentioned, a separate paper authored by our

lab provides a freestanding introduction to semantic

technologies, reviews attempts to merge the

semantic web with the AG, and theorizes their

applicability to our target industry (see Murphy,

Dick, & Fischer, 2008). For now, we continue with a

more detailed examination of the new audiovisual

tools developed for the Access Grid Community (as

first presented at the 2008 Access Grid Retreat; see

Murphy et al., 2008).

4 IMPROVING THE GRID

Most of the work on our end involved improvements

to the Access Grid that would make the process of

distributed collaborative visualization more useful,

while meeting the specific needs of our research

partners. Specifically, we will discuss in this section

our work towards enhancing the quality of video

transmitted over the AG, as well as reducing cultural

barriers to collaboration through an automated

captioning and translation service. Finally, we will

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proceed with an assessment of worthwhile future

research directions and concluding remarks.

4.1 Enhancing Video Quality

As discussed, the video application within the

Access Grid, VIC, utilizes a standard of video

known as H.261; unfortunately, this codec does not

provide enough resolution (352 x 288) for our

industrial partners, all of whom are transmitting

audio, video and industrial designs to each other. As

well, VIC is generally “buggy”, inflexible (does not

support plug-ins to suit the specific needs of its

users), and lacks support for current-generation

codecs that would enable streaming in higher

resolutions. To improve audiovisual transmission

over the AG, our team decided to develop a new tool

that would integrate VIC and RAT (audio) and, at

the same time, allow us to take advantage of a newer

codec, MPEG-4, which can produce high-definition-

quality imagery (in either 720p or 1080i). We have

also been exploring methods to deliver this stream

over the multicast network, outside of the existing

Access Grid Toolkit wrapper. One of the more

promising applications that facilitate this is

VideoLAN Client (VLC), a cross-platform, open-

source offering that is already well-established in the

consumer marketplace; therefore, several options for

technical support are available, and IT professionals

are welcome and encouraged to develop plug-ins

and wrappers that may be of particular use to their

organization.

The final element of our work in refining the

videoconferencing element of the AG involves

remote desktop control: such a feature was a specific

request of our partners, and we responded by

developing a Java applet that, when run alongside

the VLC stream (and encoded through FFmpeg),

affords the receiving side the ability to take control

of the host’s system and manipulate the design being

shared on screen. With this, collaborative

visualization and manipulation of industrial designs

can occur with a level of quality not available to

organizations using VIC, VNC or any remote

desktop client presently on the market. As a proof-

of-concept demonstration, researchers in Toronto

and in Stuttgart, Germany, recently used this system

to engage in the collaborative visualization and

manipulation of auto parts designs. This test session,

conducted in August of 2007, demonstrated high-

resolution video and audio with joint desktop

control, and was conducted with very low latency

(and less than 5 Mbps of bandwidth over the 100

Mbps CA*Net 4 research network was consumed).

4.2 Captioning & Translation Services

In order to increase efficiency in videoconferences

over the AG/VLC solution, our team has also begun

to experiment with voice recognition software, so as

to enable automated captioning of the audio feed.

Our trials thus far have utilized commercial

offerings, namely Dragon Naturally Speaking, to

convert speech to text and display it on the screen

through the use of a custom script written in Python.

In some trials, we have further attempted to send the

text through a web-based, machine translation

service (such as Google Translator) and have the end

result displayed on screen. Logically, our level of

success with both of these projects has depended

largely on how well-trained the voice recognition

software is relative to the present speaker;

additionally, the well-known limitations of machine

translation are still present in such a system. That

said, we feel that such a captioning and translation

system holds promise, since we were able to utilize

it to display and translate (into French and German)

general aspects of certain meetings with an

acceptable degree of accuracy for all stakeholders.

5 FURTHER RESEARCH

In addition to continuing our work on improving

distributed collaborative visualization techniques,

we do believe that more can be done to help

implement a level of semantic “intelligence” to the

design and procurement process. For now, we are

most concerned with further improving the basic

Access Grid extensions and enhancements we have

described above. Our main industrial partner in

Canada continues to express an interest in working

with us to improve the technology package, in

possible preparation for an eventual transfer.

However, our continued tests of the tools between

their international facilities (Canada, the United

States and China) have identified new concerns

regarding implementation across firewalled, unicast

networks. Therefore, our immediate next steps are to

work with our industrial partners to find a mutually

acceptable solution to such concerns, whilst

proceeding to condense the technology into a

compact prototype device.

Alternatively, these enhancements can remain an

integral part to the open-source Access Grid

community. In either instance, many of the tools

could also be used outside of the realm of industrial

design to facilitate other forms of media creation and

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interaction, namely collaborative performance and

shared-space artistic installations

6 CONCLUDING REMARKS

This paper has presented state of the art surveys of

distributed collaborative visualization environments,

as well as the technologies upon which they are

based. More specifically, we explored the Access

Grid by discussing its past, present and predicted use

within business. Finally, we compared this research

with the greater aims of our work at the

AccessFabrik Laboratory in creating new AG-based

tools for collaborative design and communication;

we outlined some of our work in reaching these

goals, and suggested areas we feel are worthy of

future exploration. Throughout this paper, we

attempted to relate our key points using non-

technical language, so as to make this document