An Adaptable Framework for Remote Tool Monitoring and Control

Engineering collaborations received a new global dimension with the omnipotent access to Internet. Several approaches have been introduced to support communication between collaborating engineers but little attention has been paid to enhance remote access to distributed services from mobile devices. In this paper, we propose a framework for remote tool monitoring and control (RTMC), which can be extended by the user through the definition of application specific plug-ins. The main properties of our RTMC framework are extensibility, interconnection with mobile devices, and independence from any operating systems and devices. To achieve mobile monitoring and control, we applied JXTA, which supports direct communication between stationary PCs and Java enabled mobile phones. We also introduce a so-called user-tracking layer for user location dependent message relay.