La présente thèse porte sur la collaboration dans la conception d'un système dans un cadre Ingénierie Système (IS) et plus spécifiquement, nous nous sommes intéressés à la phase de définition des besoins du système ou processus d'Ingénierie des exigences, qui est la toute première phase dans l'Ingénierie Système. L'Ingénierie des Exigences est un processus assez complexe au cours duquel les exigences qu'un système doit satisfaire sont définies à partir de besoins provenant des différentes parties prenantes concernées de près ou de loin par la réalisation du système. Nous faisons la distinction entre le besoin qui est la perception qu'un utilisateur final a du système et l'exigence qui est la vision en termes techniques qu'un concepteur ou un développeur a du système. Le processus d'élicitation des besoins et de leur transformation en exigences techniques est un travail assez critique et demande l'implication de toutes les parties prenantes. Sur la base de ce constat, nous avons adopte une approche collaborative pour traiter la complexité de ce processus. Etant donne la nature du problème, nous avons distingue deux domaines de définition de nos travaux : l'Ingénierie des Exigences à travers l'Elicitation des Exigences et la Collaboration. Nous avons ainsi adopte une démarche dans laquelle nous faisons la distinction entre les problèmes d'Ingénierie et ceux de la collaboration. Nous proposons une méthodologie pour l'Elicitation Collaborative des exigences qui distingue deux types de processus : les processus d'Ingénierie des exigences et les processus de collaboration. Les processus de collaboration sont définis à l'aide de l'Ingénierie de la Collaboration en s'appuyant sur les taches d'Ingénierie identifiées aux travers de processus d'Ingénierie fournis par des normes, en l'occurrence la norme EIA-632. Des expérimentations de notre méthodologie ont été réalises avec des étudiants en utilisant l'outil ThinkTank de GroupSystems et un prototype de spécification c ollaborative des exigences appelé SPECJ que nous avons développé.

<p>This thesis is about collaborative activities in interactive spaces. These spaces are characterized by having shared, large displays in combination with private displays and software tools that facilitate a fluent sharing of information between people and their resources. The aim is to understand the collaborative activities in interactive spaces in terms of how team members are allowed to contribute to the overall work and what influence the physical qualities of space have on the collaboration. The research questions focus on the ways team members come to contribute to the work, how roles and functions are handled during collaboration, and how the physical qualities of the space influence the collaborative activities. To investigate these issues two empirical studies were conducted. The first study focused on two student teams that carried out conceptual design activities. The second study focused on geographically distributed meetings of an international research network. Data was mainly collected using video recordings, observations and questionnaires. The analyses are primarily based on detailed investigations of video recordings. The results showed in the first study that the large, touch-sensitive displays made it possible for the team members to interact and contribute to the work in several ways, which led to more equalized roles. In the second study the setting was more complex; the use of both video- and audio conferences made it difficult for the team members to overview the situation and to take part in the conversations, and their roles became more accentuated. It was further found that the physical- and the social space were intertwined: they appeared as spaces within spaces. The team members were also in a concrete sense constructing spaces within spaces: they created their own spaces in the common space and they often made transitions between shared and private, focal and peripheral work.</p>

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.

This thesis is about collaborative activities in interactive spaces. These spaces are characterized by having shared, large displays in combination with private displays and software tools that facilitate a fluent sharing of information between people and their resources. The aim is to understand the collaborative activities in interactive spaces in terms of how team members are allowed to contribute to the overall work and what influence the physical qualities of space have on the collaboration. The research questions focus on the ways team members come to contribute to the work, how roles and functions are handled during collaboration, and how the physical qualities of the space influence the collaborative activities. To investigate these issues two empirical studies were conducted. The first study focused on two student teams that carried out conceptual design activities. The second study focused on geographically distributed meetings of an international research network. Data was mainly collected using video recordings, observations and questionnaires. The analyses are primarily based on detailed investigations of video recordings. The results showed in the first study that the large, touch-sensitive displays made it possible for the team members to interact and contribute to the work in several ways, which led to more equalized roles. In the second study the setting was more complex; the use of both video- and audio conferences made it difficult for the team members to overview the situation and to take part in the conversations, and their roles became more accentuated. It was further found that the physical- and the social space were intertwined: they appeared as spaces within spaces. The team members were also in a concrete sense constructing spaces within spaces: they created their own spaces in the common space and they often made transitions between shared and private, focal and peripheral work.

Mi trabajo de investigación se centra en el estudio de problemas organizacionales en situaciones de colaboración. En particular, esta tesis se compone de tres capítulos en los que analizo problemas de incentivos en la investigación interdisciplinar y en acuerdos de colaboración entre empresas y universidades. El primero capitulo de mi tesis, "Incentives for Interdisciplinary Research", es (hasta el momento y según mi conocimiento) el primero trabajo que caracteriza formalmente la investigación interdisciplinar a través de complementariedad en la producción y desventaja innata en los costes para el desarrollo de una nueva área científica. Mi trabajo demuestra que cuando los objetivos de la investigación son suficientemente exigentes, la investigación interdiciplinar es preferible a la investigación especializada. En el segundo capítulo de la tesis, "Business-Science Research Collaboration under Moral-Hazard", analizo cómo las características de acuerdos de colaboración son el resultado de un contrato óptimo entre las partes contratantes. Además, el tipo de acuerdo puede ser un importante instrumento de incentivo cuando algún (algunos) de los recursos importantes para la colaboración no son contratables. El análisis se hace en dos dimensiones: de la estructura del gobierno del acuerdo (descentralizada o centralizada), y de los problemas de información que esa estructura enfrenta. Aunque una estructura descentralizada siempre elije proyectos que están más cercanos a los intereses de la parte gobernante, las dos estructuras podrán utilizar el proyecto como mecanismo para reducir el efecto de riesgo moral. El tercero capítulo de la tesis, "Patents and Business-Science Research Partnership" (escrito en conjunto con Walter Garcia-Fontes), presenta un estudio empírico que relaciona las características de patentes con el proceso de investigación que las precedieron. Utilizando datos de patentes europeas, los resultados de este capítulo están de acuerdo con las predicciones teóricas del capítulo anterior de esta tesis: la identidad institucional de las organizaciones que hacen la investigación se hacen visibles en las características de las patentes. / The research of my PhD dissertation focuses on the study of organizational problems, in the context of collaborative relations. In particular, the dissertation is composed by three chapters, in which I analyze incentives problems in interdisciplinary research and in collaboration agreements between firms and universities. The first chapter of the thesis, "Incentives for Interdisciplinary Research", is (up to the moment and to my knowledge), the first article that formally characterizes interdisciplinary research: through the presence of complementarities in the production and through an innate cost disadvantage, when developing a new scientific area. My work shows that when the goals for the research are sufficiently demanding, interdisciplinarity is preferred to specialization. In the second chapter of the thesis, "Business-Science Research Collaboration under Moral-Hazard", I analyze on how the characteristics of a research agreement can be the optimal outcome of a contract between the parties. Furthermore, the type of project can also be an importance incentive tool when some of the resources that are important for the success are non-verifiable and non-contractibe. The analysis is developed in two dimensions: the structure of partnership governance (decentralized and centralized), and the informational constraints that such structures may face. Even if a decentralized structure chooses a type of project that is closer to the interests of the governing party, both structures may optimally use the project as a mechanism to reduce the impact of moral-hazard. In the third chapter of the thesis, "Patents and Business-Science Research Partnership" (jointly written with Walter Garcia-Fontes), I present an empirical study that relates the characteristics of the patents with the research process that lead to the inventions. Using data from the European Inventors Survey, PatVal-EU, the results of this chapter are aligned with the theoretical predictions of the previous chapter of the thesis: the institutional identity of the research organizations are associated with different basicness levels of the patens.

Although robotics is well established as a research field, there has been relatively little work on human-robot collaboration. This type of collaboration is going to become an increasingly important issue as robots work ever more closely with humans. Clearly, there is a growing need for research on human-robot collaboration and communication between humans and robotic systems. Research into human-human communication can be used as a starting point in developing a robust human-robot collaboration system. Previous research into collaborative efforts with humans has shown that grounding, situational awareness, a common frame of reference and spatial referencing are vital in effective communication. Therefore, these items comprise a list of required attributes of an effective human-robot collaborative system. Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology for overlaying three-dimensional virtual graphics onto the user's view of the real world. It also allows for real time interaction with these virtual graphics, enabling a user to reach into the augmented world and manipulate it directly. The internal state of a robot and its intended actions can be displayed through the virtual imagery in the AR environment. Therefore, AR can bridge the divide between human and robotic systems and enable effective human-robot collaboration. This thesis describes the work involved in developing the Augmented Reality Human-Robot Collaboration (AR-HRC) System. It first garners design criteria for the system from a review of communication and collaboration in human-human interaction, the current state of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and related work in AR. A review of research in multimodal interfaces is then provided highlighting the benefits of using such an interface design. Therefore, an AR multimodal interface was developed to determine if this type of design improved performance over a single modality design. Indeed, the multimodal interface was found to improve performance, thereby providing the impetus to use a multimodal design approach for the AR-HRC system. The architectural design of the system is then presented. A user study conducted to determine what kind of interaction people would use when collaborating with a mobile robot is discussed and then the integration of a mobile robot is described. Finally, an evaluation of the AR-HRC system is presented.

The distribution of real-time GIS (Geographic Information System) data among users is now more important than ever as it becomes increasingly affordable and important for scientific and government agencies to monitor environmental phenomena in real-time. A growing number of sensor networks are being deployed all over the world, but there is a lack of solutions for their effective monitoring. Increasingly, GIS users need access to real-time sensor data from a variety of sources, and the data must be represented in a visually-pleasing way and be easily accessible. In addition, users need to be able to collaborate with each other to share and discuss specific sensor data. The real-time acquisition, analysis, and sharing of sensor data from a large variety of heterogeneous sensor sources is currently difficult due to the lack of a standard architecture to properly represent the dynamic properties of the data and make it readily accessible for collaboration between users. This thesis will present a JEE-based publisher/subscriber architecture that allows real-time sensor data to be displayed collaboratively on the web, requiring users to have nothing more than a web browser and Internet connectivity to gain access to that data. The proposed architecture is evaluated by showing how an AJAX-based and a Flash-based web application are able to represent the real-time sensor data within novel collaborative environments. By using the latest web-based technology and relevant open standards, this thesis shows how map data and GIS data can be made more accessible, more collaborative and generally more useful.

This thesis presents an application-oriented theoretical framework for generalised and specific collaborative contexts with a special focus on Internet-based mass collaboration. The proposed framework is informed by the author’s many years of collaborative arts practice and the design, building and moderation of a number of online collaborative environments across a wide range of contexts and applications. The thesis provides transdisciplinary architecture for describing the underlying mechanisms that have enabled the emergence of mass collaboration and other activities associated with ‘Web 2.0’ by incorporating a collaboratively developed definition and general framework for collaboration and collective activity, as well as theories of swarm intelligence, stigmergy, and distributed cognition. (For complete abstract open document)

The nature and function of Task Complexity, in the context of senior secondary mathematics, has been identified through: a search of the research literature; interviews with experts that focused on the nature of task complexity; expert use of the Williams/Clarke Framework of Complexity (1997) as a tool to categorise the complexity of a task, and observation and analysis of the responses of senior secondary mathematics students as they worked in collaborative groups to solve an unfamiliar challenging problem. Although frequently used in the literature to describe tasks, ‘complexity’ has often lacked definition. Expert opinion about the nature of mathematical complexity was ascertained by seeking the opinions of experts in the areas of mathematics, mathematics education, and gifted education. Expert opinion about task complexity was stimulated by questions about the relative complexity of two tasks. The experts then categorised the complexities within each of these tasks using the Williams/Clarke Framework of Complexity. This framework identifies the dimensions of task complexity and was found by experts to be both useful and adequate for this purpose. A theoretical framework was developed to assess student ability to solve challenging problems. This theoretical framework was used to design a test to assess student ability to solve challenging problems. The information this test provided about the problem solving ability of the students in this study informed my analysis of student response to complexity.