DEMO III

Human Collaboration Tools for Net-Centric Operations

Ty W. Hayden

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

2875 Presidential Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45324, USA

thayden@ball.com

Chris Ward

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

2875 Presidential Drive, Dayton, Ohio 45324, USA

cward@ball.com

Scott Pollak

Air Force Research Lab / IFSD

WPAFB, Dayton, Ohio 45455, USA

Scott.Pollak@wpafb.af.mil

ABSTRACT

Recent research and development by Ball Aerospace’s Collaborative Technologies and Solution Group (CTSG) have underscored the need of a new genre of collaboration and communication technology. Ball is developing a new desktop collaboration tool called Net-Centric Operations or simply “NetOps.” NetOps is a cross-platform, companion-tool to KnowledgeKinetics, which aims to fill a void found in current COTS human collaboration tools. NetOps is a desktop-based (thick client) presence and instant messenger application providing an extendable set of tools and capabilities, which promote team collaboration and coordination on a large scale. NetOps communicates presence and chat information using the Jabber XML-based XMPP standard, while Web-Services handle tool or organizational information to make communications through firewalls a non-issue. In addition, NetOps provides the capability of domain specific inter/intra crew tasking, communications, alerting, and presence management in a 24/7 operating environment. Ball’s integrated Virtual Meeting Application (VMA) tool allows users to schedule virtual meetings, conduct video teleconferences, and execute instant meetings. Both NetOps and VMA provide open Plug-in architectures and APIs other developers may use to extend the base capabilities or add domain specific tools.

At CTS 2005, we will provide an interactive demonstration of the current state of the NetOps technologies and tools. Demonstration attendees will be able to connect to a NetOps server wirelessly and/or via Ethernet, automatically download the NetOps client, and participate in the demo. An interactive demonstration of VMA, including video teleconferencing using wavelet compression over HTTP/S, will also be presented.

PRESENTERS

Mr. Ty Hayden, R&D Sr. Software Developer, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Ohio, USA.

Mr. Chris Ward, R&D Software Developer, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Ohio, USA.

Mr. Scott Pollak, Computer Engineer, AFRL/IFSD, WPAFB, Ohio, USA.

RELEVANT TECHNOLOGIES

Human Collaboration, Jabber, Instant Messaging, Presence Awareness, Web-Services, Virtual Meetings (VMA), Video-Teleconferencing, Domain Tasking, KnowledgeKinetics™, Plug-in Architectures, and Java.

BIOGRAPHIES

TY HAYDEN is the lead software engineer for distributed component-based collaborative and knowledge management tools at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Dayton, Ohio. He is the original software architect of Ball’s KnowledgeKinetics (www.knowledgekinetics.info) collaborative knowledge management tool suite. In addition, Mr. Hayden has been a primary developer of the Collaborative Enterprise Environment (CEE) project at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). He received his B.S. in Computer Science from Wright State University.

CHRIS WARD is a Software Engineer in the Collaborative Technologies Research and Development Group at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Dayton, Ohio. He has worked on several R&D programs with the Air Force that deal with the application of Ball’s K² product. Mr. Ward received his B.S. in Computer Science from Wright State University.

SCOTT POLLAK is a Computer Engineer with the Collaborative Technology and Applications Branch, Information Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Site, Dayton OH. His research concentrates on in-house collaboration technologies in support of the AFRL Collaborative Enterprise Environment. He is a graduate of the University of Toledo and is pursuing graduate studies at Wright State University.