Vinod Anupam

Shastra: multimedia collaborative design environment

A distributed environment that supports multimedia interfaces, Shastra strengthens collaboration in scientific and engineering design. Implemented on a desktop system, it provides an infrastructure for user- and application-level cooperation. We describe the Shastra architecture and tools, then walk through a scenario that shows how it enhances collaborative problem solving.<<ETX>>

Distributed and collaborative visualization

Visualization typically involves large computational tasks, often performed on supercomputers. The results of these tasks are usually analyzed by a design team consisting of several members. Our goal is to depart from traditional single-user systems and build a low-cost scientific visualization environment that enables computer-supported cooperative work in the distributed setting. A synchronously conferenced collaborative visualization environment would let multiple users on a network of workstations and supercomputers share large data sets, simultaneously view visualizations of the data, and interact with multiple views while varying parameters. Such an environment would support collaboration in both the problem-solving phase and the review phase of design tasks. In this article we describe two distributed visualization algorithms and the facilities that enable collaborative visualization. These are all implemented on top of the distribution and collaboration mechanisms of an environment called Shastra, executing on a set of low-cost networked workstations.<<ETX>>

SHASTRA-an architecture for development of collaborative applications

The authors address the issue of design of architectures and abstractions to implement multimedia scientific manipulation systems in a concurrent engineering setting, where experts in a cooperating group communicate and interact to solve problems. They propose a model for the integration of software tools into a multi-user distributed and collaborative environment on the multimedia desktop, and describe a prototype CSCW infrastructure used to implement scientific problem solving tools. Finally, they briefly describe a prototype CE system built on this infrastructure. SHASTRA presents a unified prototype for some crucial enabling technologies for concurrent engineering-multimedia communication, framework integration, coordination, and enterprise integration.<<ETX>>

Scientific problem solving in a distributed and collaborative multimedia environment

We describe a distributed and collaborative environment for cooperative scientific problem solving. SHASTRA is a highly extensible, distributed and collaborative design and scientific manipulation environment. At its core is a powerful collaboration substrate - to support synchronous multi-user applications, and a distribution substrate - which emphasizes distributed problem solving. The design of SHASTRA is the embodiment of the following idea - scientific manipulation toolkits can abstractly be thought of as objects that isolate and provide specific functionality. At the system level, SHASTRA dictates architectural guidelines and provides communication facilities that let toolkits cooperate to utilize the functionality they offer. At the application level, it provides collaboration and multimedia facilities that let users cooperate. A synergistic union of these two elements yields a sophisticated problem solving environment.

A distributed virtual environment for custom prosthesis design and prototyping

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