February / March 2007


High-speed networks, lightpaths enable Eucalyptus' collaborative design innovations

Phase 1 ends; new funding to drive Phase 2

An innovative program that allows designers to collaborate over advanced networks in real time is ready to evolve into the next stage and expand across North America.



Phase one of the Eucalyptus project came to an end in December, and now the lead team at the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) at Ottawa's Carleton University is looking to secure funding to launch the next phase of the project. This next stage involves bringing this innovative technology to architecture schools across North America, exploring new ways of using the technology and partnering with other organizations and businesses to exploit its full potential.

CIMS Director Prof. Michael Jemtrud's goals for the next phase of the Eucalyptus project include developing a pan-Canadian network for design by linking together architecture schools at various Canadian universities and institutes, such as at the University of Toronto and McGill University, as well as the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. Collaboration with the School of Architecture at Pennsylvania State University is already being discussed, and talks have commenced with Los Angeles' Gehry Technologies about a possible commercial partnership. Discussions have also begun with various aerospace and automotive companies.

The first phase of the project focused on the collaboration between staff and students from Carleton's School of Architecture located both at the CIMS in Ottawa and at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) in Montreal. Original funding was provided by CANARIE's Canadian Infrastructure Program.

The next phase involves layer 3 connectivity and introducing wireless capabilities so that users with different levels of connectivity and different platforms are able to connect and participate in the Eucalyptus Participatory Design Studio (PDS). This will aid in making Eucalyptus more accessible for designers as well as for educational / training facilities.

The Eucalyptus project uses the high bandwidth of the ORION, CAnet 4 and RISQ advanced networks to allow users to work collaboratively on a project in real time from geographically dispersed locations, using web services work flow software.

Using the User Controlled Light Path* (UCLP) provisioning tool on CAnet 4, the Eucalyptus project builds a Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) for provisioning a set of resources, such as videoconferencing tools, 3D modelling and digital design applications, used by architectural design teams. It provides a user-friendly 'dashboard' for architects to control these tools and instruments.

"Eucalyptus is a really exciting project because it has such a broad scope for future day-to-day uses, both in the research and education field and for commercial industry," said Prof. Michael Jemtrud, Eucalyptus project lead, Associate Professor and Director of the Carleton Immersive Media Studio, run by Carleton University's School of Architecture. "It's not specific to a particular application - it can be used with virtually anything and is truly integrative."

In other words, this is not just a technological leap for architects and urban planners. It also opens the door to applications in a broad range of industries, including aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, military, gaming, marketing and sports, to name a few. Eucalyptus's real innovation is the capability of putting together all kinds of data sets to generate digital simulations of astonishing accuracy and detail. Through high-speed networks such as ORION, data can travel at an astonishing four gigabits per second, roughly the equivalent of sending an entire DVD or 80,000 web pages in a second.

A rather unusual use of the technology involves break-dancers in Montreal and Ottawa who will be able to improvise five- to 20-minute dance sessions or 'duelling' dances with each other next June at the National Dance Festival (orchestrated through the National Arts Centre). The dancers will connect through the Eucalyptus real-time collaboration technology that harnesses the power of advanced networks such as ORION, CAnet 4 and RISQ.

The emergence of SOA and UCLP is expected to herald the beginning of an era where fully collaborative multi-site design will become the norm.

Eucalyptus' UCLP software was provided by the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC), and the Eucalyptus Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture was provided by the National Research Council Canada (NRC). Other partners include IBM Canada, Alias System (now Autodesk), and Pleora Technologies.

Learn more about the Eucalyptus project at www.cims.carleton.ca.

NB: A lightpath is a dedicated connection between two switches in an optical network, and typically connects two points on the network at speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second.

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