Design Team Members: Derek Kraan, Archana Gopal and Andrea Murczek
Supervisor: Dr. John Zelek
Background
Dispersed project teams are growing more common in a variety of workplaces. As a result, the need for more advanced remote collaboration capabilities has grown. While there are many video conferencing and teleconferencing solutions, very few enable effective interactive and collaborative whiteboard sessions. Current interactive whiteboards provide a single whiteboard and allow participants to write and erase on the whiteboard surface. Collaborative whiteboards allow users across multiple locations to use a common whiteboard but users are currently restricted to modifying only their own work on the board.
Project description
CollabraBoard proposes to merge interactive and collaborative whiteboard technologies. CollabraBoard will provide seamless whiteboard integration with video conferencing capabilities. Ultimately, the Collabraboard project endeavours to minimize costs with a final design that takes advantage of equipment that is either readily available in most corporate meeting rooms or available off-the-shelf.
Design methodology
The CollabraBoard aims to integrate three main functionalities: writing and erasing, video-conferencing, and two-way transmission.
Writing and Erasing
The CollabraBoard will digitally capture and display writing on an electronic whiteboard through the use of an infrared (IR) marker as an IR source, an IR camera to track the motions of the infrared marker (contained in a Wii Remote), a computer to process the images, and a projector to display the image onto the whiteboard.
Video-Conferencing
The final design will include a screen that displays the cumulative writing of all participants superimposed on the video footage of the other remote participants. The video will be displayed such that it appears that the remote user is writing on the local whiteboard itself.
Two-way Transmission
In
order
to
allow
for
collaboration
among
individuals
at
various
locations,
two-way
transmission
of
information
is
necessary.
The
changes
relating
to
both
writing
and
erasing,
and
video-conferencing
that
are
made
on
one
whiteboard
must
be
reflected
across
multiple
boards.
The group will simultaneously develop the writing and erasing and the video-conferencing components of the CollabraBoard. Once these components are successfully developed, two-way communication will be developed. Finally, the three components will be integrated together to achieve a functional end product. Some effort will also be dedicated to developing an intuitive interface for the whiteboard. This interface will allow users to modify personal options, such as the color of their IR marker or the opacity of the video-feed, and save snapshots of the whiteboard contents.