Benjamim Fonseca

A software architecture for collaborative training in virtual worlds: F-16 airplane engine maintenance

The maintenance of military aircraft is complex and exhaustive, requiring an accurate training program. This process is not fault tolerant and requires certification renewal periodically. Furthermore, the process involves many professionals and resources, requiring phases of maintenance and verification of the tasks. Cooperation between professionals in the overall process is essential and requires strong team coordination. It is a highly costly process, since aircrafts are scarce and their readiness is essential for missions, and it requires a scheduling effort between all team members and aircrafts. The availability of tools that allow intensive training without aircraft presence is an asset to the maintenance squadrons. Virtual worlds have simulation and collaboration capabilities to implement this process. This paper presents a software architecture developed for training engine maintenance squadrons for certification, using virtual worlds platforms. This architecture is being tested in cooperation with the Portuguese Air Force and an engine maintenance squadron of F-16 aircrafts.

PLAYER – a European Project and a Game to Foster Entrepreneurship Education for Young People

Entrepreneurship is widely recognized as one of the basic skills to be acquired through a life-long learning. The European Union, under the guidance of the Oslo Agenda, promotes several initiatives to develop entrepreneurship culture in Europe. Education can make a significant contribution to entrepreneurship, encouraging the development of entrepreneurial attitudes and skills in young people. Serious Games are presently recognised as having an important role and potential in education and social networks emerged in the last years as the platform preferred by many, especially young people, to socialize, play games and even learn. This paper presents the PLAYER project, in which a game was developed and implemented as a Facebook application, to enable learning entrepreneurial skills progressively, by guiding users to develop a business idea in the form of a business plan.

Towards an overarching classification model of CSCW and groupware: a socio-technical perspective

The development of groupware systems can be supported by the perspectives provided by taxonomies categorizing collaboration systems and theoretical approaches from the multidisciplinary field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). In the last decades, multiple taxonomic schemes were developed with different classification dimensions, but only a few addressed the socio-technical perspective that encompasses the interaction between groups of people and technology in work contexts. Moreover, there is an ambiguity in the use of the categories presented in the literature. Aiming to tackle this vagueness and support the development of future groupware systems aware of social phenomena, we present a comprehensive classification model to interrelate technological requirements with CSCW dimensions of communication, coordination, cooperation, time and space, regulation, awareness, group dynamics, and complementary categories obtained from a taxonomic literature review.

Development of a Mechanical Maintenance Training Simulator in OpenSimulator for F-16 Aircraft Engines

Abstract Mechanical maintenance of F-16 engines is carried out as a team effort involving 3 to 4 skilled engine technicians. This paper presents the development of a mechanical maintenance simulator for their training. This simulator aims to enable technician training to be enhanced with cooperation and context prior to the training phase with actual physical engines. We describe the requirements that were identified with the Portuguese Air Force, the overall software architecture of the system, the current stage of the prototype, and the outcomes of the first field tests with users.

Development of a mechanical maintenance training simulator in OpenSimulator for F-16 aircraft engines

Abstract Mechanical maintenance of F-16 engines is carried out as a team effort involving 3–4 skilled engine technicians, but the details of its procedures and requisites change constantly, to improve safety, optimize resources, and respond to knowledge learned from field outcomes. This provides a challenge for development of training simulators, since simulated actions risk becoming obsolete rapidly and require costly reimplementation. This paper presents the development of a 3D mechanical maintenance training simulator for this context, using a low-cost simulation platform and a software architecture that separates simulation control from simulation visualization, in view of enabling more agile adaptation of simulators. This specific simulator aims to enable technician training to be enhanced with cooperation and context prior to the training phase with actual physical engines. We provide data in support of the feasibility of this approach, describing the requirements that were identified with the Portuguese Air Force, the overall software architecture of the system, the current stage of the prototype, and the outcomes of the first field tests with users.

Exploiting Classical Bibliometrics of CSCW: Classification, Evaluation, Limitations, and the Odds of Semantic Analytics

The purpose of this study is to conduct a bibliometric and taxonomy-based analysis of the field of CSCW to map its recent evolution at a quantitative and qualitative level. A model for semantic analytics and social evaluation is also discussed with emphasis on the hypothesis of putting crowds into the loop of bibliography classification process to improve the current labor-intensive, time-consuming, unrepeatable and sometimes subjective task of scientometricians. A total of 1,480 publications were carefully reviewed and subjected to scientometric data analysis methods and techniques. Analyzed parameters included document orientation, deviation from trend in the total number of citations, and publication activity by author’s affiliation country. A semantic classification of 541 publications allows identifying growing trends and lacking research indicators. At a human-centered perspective, limitations are unfilled in the limitative analytical spectrum, laborious and time-consuming processes of data seeking, gathering, cataloguing and analysis, subjective results at a taxonomic level, lack of more bibliographic data analytics perspectives, and absence of human-centered results concerning cognitive aspects in meta-knowledge research practices. Hypotheses are suggested towards a crowd-enabled model for bibliography evaluation in order to understand the ways as humans and machines can work cooperatively and massively on scientific data to solve complex problems.

Development of platform-independent multi-user choreographies for virtual worlds based on ontology combination and mapping

This paper presents two contributions: (i) a system architecture capable of staging platform-independent choreographies within different virtual worlds, and (ii) an ontology-based solution for capturing and representing multi-user choreographies with reduced time/effort. We argue that choreographies for virtual worlds should be clearly separated from the technical characteristics of their execution in virtual world technological platforms. Due to the heterogeneity of the various virtual worlds and their domain requirements, we propose exploiting the modularity, generality, and granularity dimensions of ontologies to simplify and empower the choreography modeling capabilities. Instead of a unique ontology, several ontologies with different levels of generality and granularity can be progressively combined to support the modeling requirements of a given choreography. Because these ontologies are aligned with the ontology of each specific virtual world platform, the mapping and transformation between the core ontology is simplified and automated, thus reducing the development and time-to-market.

SAGA reloaded: Towards a generic platform for developing cooperative applications

Groupware specification and development has always been a complex task, requiring special attention to issues such as notification of cooperative actions and ensuring consistency of shared data. Some years ago SAGA was developed as a framework to build groupware applications based on a set of core web services that provide the most common cooperative functionalities. Despite its potential, the last few years brought some technological developments that placed new challenges. This paper presents a new generation of the SAGA platform that adds to the original framework features that emerged recently, namely the regulation of social interaction, incorporation of new communication technologies, connectors to several external services and interaction environments, and the addition of contextual information.

Computer-Simulated 3D Virtual Environments in Collaborative Learning and Training: Meta-Review, Refinement, and Roadmap

3D3C worlds can constitute versatile and inexpensive solutions for collaborative learning and training. The embodied human interaction around virtual objects supports a set of activities, enriching the way people learn, work and socialize via graphical representations, and also using features such as Internet browsing, instant messaging, and online voice chat. Nevertheless, research on 3D virtual environments for online education and training identified a set of challenges which include but are not limited to a lack of institutional support, standardization, evaluation methods for measuring learning outcomes, integration between virtual learning environments and virtual worlds, and support for healthy aging and people with special needs. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of 3D3C worlds’ challenges and opportunities by updating the literature with a qualitative analysis covering 49 publications (2006–2014). The meta-review includes a research agenda based on 161 condensed meaning units.

Online-Gym: Multiuser Virtual Gymnasium Using RINIONS and Multiple Kinect Devices

To enhance older citizens practice of physical exercise, we present the architecture, development, and pilot testing of a multiuser online gymnasium based on Kinect motion capture and OpenSimulator, which aims to enable socialization and supervision of exercise practice without travel requirements. The prototype was tested simultaneously with 4 elders at different locations, providing data on the feasibility of the approach and informing subsequent development and research.