Online 3 D Collaboration System For Engineering Education

The Internet has provided new communication methods for most people is all walks of like, particularly for education and industry. It is common that people email friends, pay bills online and play games together when they are in two countries. Industry has employed video conference to discuss engineering problems and to share files. Education has utilized websites to present education and training materials and discussions. Generally, these applications employ two dimensional collaboration tools. As new Internet technologies develop and the computer processing speeds increase, constructing a real-time online engineering education and training collaboration tool for a team of remotely distributed learners has become an important research topic. However, it is a challenging task to develop and implement a true synchronized interactive three-dimensional system for online connected users. Major obstacles in developing and implementing such a system include large three-dimensional object data size, real-time threedimensional world rendering, and bandwidth limitation. This paper introduces the background of doing research on online synchronous threedimensional engineering learning environment over the Internet for a group of people from various physically separated sites. It also reviews research that has been done in online distance engineering education and training. Finally, this paper presents a real online example, called "3D Bracket", which is designed to help engineering students understand concepts of torque, bending and superposition theory of Mechanics. In this learning environment the users are capable of designing and manipulating three-dimensional models, such as changing the view point and applying forces at various locations of the bracket. All participates are connected online, and are able to view the bracket deflection through a web-browser in real-time from any local. In addition, the students are allowed to exchange ideas via audio and text chat. This research employs Adobe Director to generate online real-time three-dimensional model in this team-based engineering education environment. Adobe Flash Communication Server (recently renamed Flash Media Server) is used as the synchronous technology to invoke the synchronize changes among the multiple remote learners. The main purpose of this research is the design and implementation of a framework to integrate the instant audio communication and interactive three-dimensional models over the Internet. This framework makes the online realtime team engineering work possible.