Evaluation and Development of Digital Collaboration Techniques for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Abstract

In innovative industrial companies, collaboration techniques and laboratories have been in use for years. What historically started with teleconferencing instead of business trips has now reached the status of normal tools for interdisciplinary cooperation in these companies with advances in technologies such as PCs and data broadband as well as software such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). But the collaboration techniques are often installed in extra rooms, e.g. video conferencing facilities and large VR laboratories. Other technologies such as chat programs can be used by any employee directly at his workplace. Without the use of these techniques, the short development times required today in many industrial sectors cannot be achieved and even remote maintenance of machines at the customer’s would be impossible for machine manufacturers. Within a research project, digital collaboration techniques are inspected and evaluated regarding their suitability for interdisciplinary cooperation in various applications. Collaboration techniques include special hardware for graphic simulations and head-mounted displays for 360∘ visualization of digital objects. Additionally different software for cooperation with graphics, video and conference programs distributed over several locations is tested, evaluated and partly newly developed. The application cases are processes from engineering and for planning of buildings. Based on the requirements determined during the tests, a new user-friendly mobile collaboration environment was developed. This collaboration environment integrates the different technologies of graphic simulation as well as already established methods such as video transmission or video conferencing and chat programs in a suitcase system.