Premium
Virtual laboratory: A distributed collaborative environment
Author(s) -
Achalakul Tiranee,
Sirinaovakul Booncharoen,
Nuttaworakul Nion
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
computer applications in engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.478
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1099-0542
pISSN - 1061-3773
DOI - 10.1002/cae.20008
Subject(s) - computer science , whiteboard , architecture , distributed component object model , set (abstract data type) , collaborative software , distributed object , multimedia , world wide web , virtual laboratory , object (grammar) , human–computer interaction , operating system , common object request broker architecture , artificial intelligence , programming language , art , visual arts
This article proposes the design framework of a distributed, real‐time collaborative architecture. The architecture concept allows information to be fused, disseminated, and interpreted collaboratively among researchers who live across continents in real‐time. The architecture is designed based on the distributed object technology, DCOM. In our framework, every module can be viewed as an object. Each of these objects communicates and passes data with one another via a set of interfaces and connection points. We constructed the virtual laboratory based on the proposed architecture. The laboratory allows multiple analysts to collaboratively work through a standard web‐browser using a set of tools, namely, chat, whiteboard, audio/video exchange, file transfer and application sharing. Several existing technologies are integrated to provide collaborative functions, such as NetMeeting. Finally, the virtual laboratory quality evaluation is described with an example application of remote collaboration in satellite image fusion and analysis. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 12: 44–53, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20008