Today globally distributed software development has become the norm for many organizations and the popularity of implementing such an approach continues to increase. In these circumstances a strategy often employed is the use of virtual software development teams. Due to the collaborative nature of software development this has proved a difficult and complex endeavor. Research has identified di...

The three main navigation paradigms for virtual worlds, i.e., free navigation, automatic tours, and multiuser navigation show important limitations when dealing with guided visits that involve interactive cooperation among several users in 3D virtual worlds over the Internet. In this paper, we present our research into this issue and some important results. We propose a new navigation paradigm ...

In the recent years, the usage of 3D Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) for educational purposes has increased. The metaphors behind the design of virtual places are quite diverse, from replication of real universities to art museums and scientific labs. At the same time, recent technological developments have opened new perspectives for the cooperation between human learners, virtual hu...

Previous research on virtuality has been dominated by discussions of virtual teams, involving either students or organisational employees, with the latter dominated by larger organisations. Little attention has been paid to the SME sector, despite the apparent benefits that could accrue to SMEs that make effective use of virtual collaboration and cooperation technologies. In this paper we repor...

This work proposes a way to model the structure and behavior of agents supporting the information systems of a virtual enterprise. The research is focused on a special type of virtual enterprises, namely those that formed for One-of-a-kind-products (OKP), that is, highly individualized and rather unique projects. First, the nature of business processes in such an environment is presented, toget...

In this paper, a control method of robots for human-robot cooperative manipulation is investigated. We propose estimating human motion using the minimum jerk model for smooth cooperation. Using nonlinear least-squares method, we identify two parameters of the minimum-jerk model in real-time. The estimated position of the human hand is used to determine the desired position of the end-effector o...

A strong research emphasis is being given towards regulating interoperable multi-agent environments through norms and institutions. We are concerned with environments in which agents form together virtual organizations leading to cooperation agreements that can be enforced. An electronic institution provides a coordination framework facilitating automatic contract establishment and providing an...

In this report we show how proper cooperation among radio nodes may provide diversity gain, also for single antenna systems. We consider first the connectivity of a wireless network and show how it can benefit from cooperation. Then, we consider some specific forms of cooperations, based on distributed space-time coding, in both single and multi-user contexts. Finally, we pay a special attentio...

Success in human-agent interaction will to a large extent depend on the ability of the system to cooperate with humans over repeated tasks. It is not yet clear how cooperation between humans and virtual agents evolves and is interlinked with the attribution of qualities like trustworthiness or competence between the cooperation partners. To explore these questions, we present a new interaction ...

This paper presents some results of our recent research work towards an infrastructure for Internet enabled collaborative agent systems (particularly complex industrial collaborative agent systems). Although the infrastructure and the related agent system architecture, basic communication and cooperation services, components, prototypes, mechanisms and toolkits are proposed and developed for In...