Cairo: A system for facilitating communication in a distributed collaborative engineering environment

Abstract

Conference management is a critical component of a collaborative engineering effort. This paper describes cairo (Collaborative Agent Interaction control and synchROnization system), a system for managing participants in a distributed conference. We have drawn from various models of group interaction and social communications theory in order to develop cairo. The cairo system provides both media synchronization, i.e. insuring that all information conveyed from one participant to another is synchronized, and agent synchronization, i.e. insuring effective structuring and control of a distributed conference.