Paper: Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Collaborative Process Modelling System

Just had our paper "Evaluation of an Augmented Reality Collaborative Process Modelling System" accepted for CyberWorlds 2012 in Darmstadt, run by Fraunhofer IGD.

Paper is found here.

Abstract - Identifying, modelling and documenting business processes usually requires the collaboration of many stakeholders that may be spread across companies in inter-organizational business settings. While there are many process modelling tools available, the support they provide for remote collaboration is still limited. This paper investigates the application of virtual environment and augmented reality technologies to remote business process modelling, with an aim to assisting common collaboration tasks by providing an increased sense of immersion in a shared workspace. We report on the evaluation of a prototype system with five key informants. The results indicate that this approach to business process modelling is suited to remote collaborative task settings, and stakeholders may indeed benefit from using augmented reality interfaces.

Ross

Augmented Virtuality for Processes

Google Earth with real time updates is now a possibility in the near future, with research being performed at Georgia Tech. A nice YouTube video is shown here of research into augmenting 3D Google Earth locations with camera updates, that are processed to show pedestrian and car movements in an area.

This is useful for showing process information updates in real time in a virtual setting.

We can now see that the various representation spaces for information: virtual world, image/video and augmented reality, seem to be heading towards a unified whole representation. Such a multi-space can be used to freely move in an out of 3D representations as we see fit, or to embed one within another - eg. Second Life as a 3D rendering on your physical desk using Augmented Reality technology.

So, the console view of your company's information, may indeed be spatially laid out in future, within a world visualisation like Google Earth.

Ross