Synchronous Remote Collaboration Using Multi-touch Devices

Teams collaborating during the design of a project can be considered as a subset of a Digital Ecosystem. Their work are supported by digital systems that are mainly used to capitalize any kind of data and documents created or only consulted during common sessions. We are interested by the way people can create together new ideas either using the same interactive system like an interactive tabletop either using individual devices like tablet pcs. We have made an experiment where two teams have to collaborate during common sessions but in two different places. Teams shared two similar collaborative environment communicating in a synchronous way. Each activity on one display is replicated in real time on the remote system. The paper describes the interactive system and the persitence system used to capitalize data. It presents the different activities that can be performed and it also shows the experiments that have been conducted.