Current Status and Future Plans

Overview

Work on the Spectro-Microscopy Collaboratory began in early 1995. The design, construction, and installation of a remote experiment monitoring system is complete. Work on remote experiment control system is now underway. We have also completed design and implementation of a remote microscope system for use as a testbed for Collaboratory tools.

In the past year, we have demonstrated the concepts and elements of scientific collaboratories to the scientific community. The talks and demonstrations are documented in "Related Talks", and "Demonstrations". The conference papers related to collaboratory issues are listed in "Conference Papers".

In order to establish a faster pace of progress for the development of some components for this collaboratory, we have solicited collaboration from other national laboratories, Universities (at national and international levels), and industries involved in the research and development of collaboratories. A Request for Proposal was issued on January, 1996[RFP96]. Regarding the on-line notebook component, a call for proposals was prepared, and used to contact potential collaborating organizations [Call95].

Project progress reports are available on the World Wide Web, and results have been published and reported in the appropriate technical communities. The Collaboratory is composed of many components which are being developed in parallel. We describe here the progress that we have achieved towards the goals of this project, and plans for future research and development. Research and development of each specific component is discussed.

Please see the Project Summary and Original Design Document, for more details regarding the components of the Collaboratory.

Detail by Component

Remote Monitoring

Security and Distributed File Access

Data Dissemination

Remote Control

Validated Remote Operation

Resouce Management

Telepresence

Network Support

Electronic Notebook

References:

[Johnston95] Security Architectures for Large-Scale Remote Environments.

[Stein88] J. G. Steiner, C. Neuman, J. I. Schiller, "Kerberos: An Authentication Service for Open Network Systems," Project Athena, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA. March 30, 1988.

[Agarwal94] D. A. Agarwal, "Totem: A Reliable Ordered Delivery Protocol for Interconnected Local-Area Networks (Ph.D. Dissertation)," ECE Technical Report #94-29, University of California, Santa Barbara.

[Safety96] S. R. Sachs, ``A mechanism for the safe control of motion in the ultraESCA sample chamber''. Draft version, Jan 1996.

[Cameras95] S. R. Sachs, D. Agarwal, and M. Blaufuss, ``A Remote Camera System for the ALS Collaboratory'' LBNL Internal Report, September 1995.

[Research96] S. R. Sachs, ``Electronic Notebooks for Distributed Collaboratories: envisioned research and development'', LBNL Internal Report, November 1995.

[Requirements95] S. R. Sachs and D. Agarwal, ``Requirements of a Notebook for Remote Collaboration'', LBNL Internal Report, July 1995.

[DCEE95-2] D. Agarwal, ``DCEE project Data Dissemination'' , DCEE working group meeting, Berkeley, June 15, 1995.

[DCEE95-3] D. Agarwal, ``DCEE project Resource Arbitrator'' , DCEE working group meeting, Berkeley, June 15, 1995.

[DCEE95-4] S. R. Sachs, ``Robotics Cameras'' , DCEE working group meeting, Berkeley, June 15, 1995.

[DCEE95-5] S. R. Sachs, ``The Experiment Recording Component of the ALS Collaboratory'' , DCEE working group meeting, Berkeley, June 15, 1995.

[Call95] S. R. Sachs, ``Distributed Collaboratories: Calls for Collaboration'', LBNL Internal Report, November 1995.

[Workshop96] S. R. Sachs, ``Electronic Notebooks Workshop'', IEEE Fifth Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, June 17-19, 1996, Stanford University, CA.
Please also visit the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Home Page. Advanced Computing for Science Department Home Page.

This document was last updated on October 04, 1996, and is located at http://www.dsd.lbl.gov/~deba/ALS.DCEE/status/status.html.

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