Human-human collaboration formalism for groupware tailorability in collaborative augmented environments

In this paper, human-human collaboration formalism has been proposed to support groupware tailorability for Collaborative Augmented Environments (CAE). Our work is based on the 3C functional model proposed by Ellis. This model decomposes the collaboration into communication, coordination and production. This decomposition has been adapted to design tailorable groupware for CAE. A new concept called “distribution” has been introduced to consider the properties of collaborative and distributed 3D environment. A new formalism integrating this concept is proposed in order to adapt a groupware system to the real need of users evolving in 3D shared scene. Multi-agent technology is, therefore, used to determine the collaboration protocol between humans, through machines, over the network for implementing the desired tailorability.