Automatically determining the awareness settings among people in distributed working environment

• US 7,028,074 B2
• Filed: 07/03/2001
• Issued: 04/11/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/03/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ye, Yiming, Boies, Stephen J., Tsotsos, John K., Huang, Paul Y.
• Primary Examiner(s): Dinh, Dung C.
• Assistant Examiner(s): STRANGE, AARON N
• Application Number:
  US09/897,142
• Publication Number:
  US 20030028593A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,743 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204, 709/223, 709/224, 715/716, 715/753, 715/756, 370/260, 348/14.1
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/00 Arrangements for monitoring or testing data switching networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/53 using third party service providers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

Communication channels among users in a collaborative computing system are automatically adjusted based on users'"'"' current states detected by various sensing devices. The collaboration system that includes an awareness system for evaluating, monitoring, and controlling, in real-time, the collaboration environment by having events and occurrences with properties. The awareness monitoring system includes (1) receiving and analyzing real time data from input sensors and (2) an elastic spring energy model for automatically adjusting a distance according to a level of privacy desired by individual users, the requirement of the organization, and a need of the collaborative project to have some shared information about individual user activities. When a spring energy model is difficult to obtain, a matrix looks up model is used to automatically adjust a distance according to a level of privacy desired by individual users, the requirement of the organization, and the need of the collaborative project.

Claims

1. A method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment comprising the steps of:

receiving real-time data produced by an event; and

automatically adjusting a distance according to a degree of clarity, desired by individual users, of a corresponding signal received from another party and a need of a collaborative project to have some shared information about individual user activities using an elastic spring energy model, wherein a matrix and vector look up model is used to determine the distances among distributed users, the values of the matrix and the vector encoding preferences of a user and preference requirements of another user.

2. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 1, wherein the step of automatically adjusting a distance is performed by a multi-agent system that automatically and selectively provides perceived information to others based on perceived events or status associated with others.

3. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 2, wherein the elastic spring energy model governs reaction of an information system in real time when events or status changes.

4. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 2, wherein each agent acts on its user'"'"'s behalf to adjust an awareness level among different users.

5. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 1, further comprising the step of dividing communications between different users into different channels and specifying a clearness level for each channel.

6. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 1, wherein the elastic spring energy model is a dynamic model so that the step of automatically adjusting a distance takes into consideration events which happen at each user'"'"'s site.

7. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 1, wherein the elastic spring energy model determines potential energy vectors which encode a user'"'"'s preference on distances.

8. The method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment recited in claim 1, wherein the matrix and vector additionally encode the preferences of the a task and the preferences of an organization.

9. A method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment comprising the steps of:

receiving real-time data produced by an event; and

automatically adjusting a distance according to a degree of clarity, desired by individual users, of a corresponding signal received from another party and a need of a collaborative project to have some shared information about individual user activities using an elastic spring energy model, wherein the elastic spring energy model takes into consideration a user'"'"'s frustration level if information about the user is revealed to another on the occurrence of a particular event.

10. A method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment comprising the steps of:

receiving real-time data produced by an event; and

automatically adjusting a distance according to a degree of clarity, desired by individual users, of a corresponding signal received from another party and a need of a collaborative project to have some shared information about individual user activities using an elastic spring energy model, wherein the elastic spring energy model determines potential energy vectors which encode awareness requirements for a collaborative task.

11. A method for automatically determining awareness settings among people in a distributed working environment comprising the steps of:

receiving real-time data produced by an event; and

automatically adjusting a distance according to a degree of clarity, desired by individual users, of a corresponding signal received from another party and a need of a collaborative project to have some shared information about individual user activities using an elastic spring energy model, wherein the elastic spring energy model determines potential energy vectors which encode a user'"'"'s preference on distances and awareness requirements for a collaborative task.