New and Emerging Technologies that Support Collaboration
Given the social nature of human beings and their need to communicate with each other (Rogers et al., 2007), collaboration devices have been developed to enable people to communicate in a more interactive and collaborative way despite being separated by distance.
As such, experts continue to come up with new technologies to further advance and improve the capabilities of collaboration devices and the user experience they offer.
The following are the new paradigms that have been identified for use in future technologies in the Collaborative Working Environments for Europe (CWE), as reported in the 5th Collaboration@Work Expert Group Report (Mehandjiev, & Stokic, 2006): movement of the Web 2.0 technology from an individual to a group or company level; development of serious games for performing work and for learning; consideration of a C-pod (collaboration-supporting-Pod) as a future super-device capability; development of a C-etiquette to govern the technical solutions created; and cooperativity, which refers to the “degree to which a CWE offers user-friendly and effective support for the collaborative process within a group” (Mehandjiev, & Stokic). These technologies are due for development from 2007 to 2013.
There are also developments being made for collaboration devices for the military forces. One example is the Joint Tactical Radio System, Ground Mobile Radio (JTRS GMR) being developed by Boeing, and which is currently undergoing testing (Boeing, 2012). It “enables commanders to view and understand the battle space, communicate their intent, lead their forces, and disseminate real-time information” (Boeing) in a secure manner.
Alcatel Lucent’s Bell Labs is also developing a technology called immersive communication (Mackie, 2011). It is similar to the video conferencing concept except that the video feeds of real people are inserted into artificial environments that can be customized.
The video feed from each user ‘s camera is edited to remove the background and the edited video is then inserted into a virtual world. This creates a mixed reality environment where the users can feel as if they’re in the same place – for example, around a boardroom table. This also enables the use and manipulation of documents and digital elements such as whiteboards within the virtual space. This technology performs video processing on the cloud and only requires thin clients, which make it easy for mobile users and remote workers to use.
References
Boeing (2012). Joint tactical radio system, ground mobile radios (JTRS GMR). Retrieved from http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/jtrs/index.html
Mackie, S. (2011). Immersive communications: The future of video collaboration?. Retrieved from http://gigaom.com/collaboration/immersive-communications-the-future-of-video-collaboration/
Mehandjiev, N., & Stokic, Dragan. (2006). I. Laso-Ballesteros (Ed.). Future and emerging technologies and paradigms for collaborative working environments. Retrieved from http://www.ami-communities.eu/www.amiatwork.com/ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/atwork/hot_news/publications/documents/experts_group_report_5.pdf
Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. (2007). Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons
