Fusion Engineering and Design 74 (2005) 903–907

Using remote participation tools to improve collaborations

S. Balme∗, J. How, J.M. Theis, N. Utzel

Association EURATOM-CEA, CEA/DSM/DRFC, CEA Cadarache, 13108 St. Paul Lez Durance, France

Available online 1 September 2005

Abstract

Research on fusion requires effective collaboration between members who are not co-located in time and space.In order that distance should not restrict collaboration, this paper gives ideas and solutions to encourage and improve remote

participation.This includes techniques for:

1. “On-line” discussions with internet via instant messaging (IM).2. Sharing a publication space, using a collaborative web workspace.3. Equipping dedicated meeting rooms with flexible communication and collaboration tools, hardware and software for multi-

standard videoconferences.4. Sharing presentations and supervision screens.5. Participating remotely to experiments.

© 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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. Introduction

The objective of this current report is to clearlyresent our installations and experience for actual Toreupra collaborations, such that interested persons can

earn and profit for their own work. We shall there-ore emphasise the practical applications of remotearticipation, rather than the principles, which are nowell known. We expect a very strong participation foradarache with ITER and in this perspective we wish

o be able to share our practical experience in RP tech-iques.

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 4 4225 4748;ax: +33 4 4225 2661.

E-mail address: stephane.balme@cea.fr (S. Balme).

We would like to acknowledge in particular twork done by our EFDA–JET colleagues, and ocollaborators within the EFDA organisation. T“Departement de Recherche sur la Fusion Conteedu Commissariata l’Energie Atomique”, CEA/DRFCis one of the principle collaborators in the JET pgramme. JET took the lead in many of the ideastechniques used in the DRFC RP programme, avigorous technical collaboration exists betweenand the DRFC.

2. “On-line” discussions

There is no doubt that internet has changed thewe communicate. For many of us, e-mail has virtu

920-3796/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2005.06.273

904 S. Balme et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 74 (2005) 903–907

replaced traditional letters and even telephone calls asthe choice for correspondence. Every day, billions of e-mail messages are sent out and e-mail has been perhapsthe most rapidly adopted form of communication everknown.

But this communication mode is asynchronous andrequires many clicks to send, read, and reply to mes-sages. This is why instant messaging (IM) has gainedpopularity. Less intrusive than phone and more efficientthat e-mail, instant messaging is the ideal tool for dailycollaborative work. It is also useful for maintenanceand support purpose, for a background in a videocon-ference session, for example.

Firstly at Tore Supra, we used IM Yahoo Messenger,but this tool provided unacceptable security risks (spe-cially files sharing) and has been forbidden. Today thebest solution in IM for the fusion community is a cus-tomised version of IM Jabber[1]. It has been configuredby the EFDA/ITER computing team in Garching on aprivate and encrypted server to avoid all the potentialrisks and has been validated and accepted by the Net-work Safety Department. Currently, 20 of the DRFCstaff subscribe to this service, and more are joiningregularly.

3. Sharing a publication space

In a large project the documentation must be verys nta-t , thec atei tivep rall verye

acesD en-s S)[ olu-t t in“ ces( n-a sers( ersa plew

The main features are:

• document integration, indexing and versioning;• attached comments;• interactive services (mailing-lists, forums, newslet-

ter, agenda, contacts);• custom workflows (with “point and click” editor

interface);• search tools.

The DRFC is setting up two eDoc publicationspaces, one dedicated to collaborations, the other isproposed for EFDA remote participation exchanges(web sites, forums,. . .). Also Zope technology hasbeen adopted by ITER team as the environment fortheir future document management tools.

In addition, Concurrent Versions System (CVS)[4]is used for multi-site code development and manage-ment.

4. Meetings by videoconference

Last year we equipped a meeting room to enablemulti-institutional teams of experts to efficiently col-laborate in the fusion development effort. This roomconcentrates many communication and collaborationtechnologies using both low cost, but reliable, productswith open source software, and commercial solutions(Fig. 1).

Virtual Room Videoconferencing System (VRVS)[ m-m asd theh ail-a y. Itr ithc ounds lti-p resg ustice ends stal-l

nalp ot sup-p ideoq nd

trictly managed. But as the amount of documeion grows, from many sources and of many typeshallenge of finding useful, applicable and up-to-dnformation becomes a real problem. Collaboraortals bring all project information into one cent

ocation that can be accessed anytime, anywhereasily.

The CEA has adopted the application eDoc (Espocumentaires Collaboratifs) based on the opolution Nuxeo Collaborative Portal Server (CP®

2], the collaborative web content management sion for Zope[3]. Users create and manage contenWorkgroups” and publish them in publications spa“Hierarchies”) through a dedicated workflow. Magers can easily set roles for local and remote uWorkgroup Managers, Members, Visitors, Reviewnd Readers). All actions are available through simeb interfaces.

5] is a low cost “multi-protocol infrastructure accoodating Mbone, H 323 and SIP clients”. It weveloped by Caltech for use by CERN andigh energy community, and is now freely avble to the education and research communituns on Windows, Linux and Unix and interacts wommon audiovisual hardware, cameras and stations. Because of its wide flexibility and mulatform interactivity our experience is that it requireat care to set up, especially concerning aconvironment and echo cancellation. We recommkilled technical experience to set up such an ination.

Commercial installations using the internatiorotocol H 323[6] implementation for audio and vide

ransport are more expensive, but integrate echoression techniques, and have higher audio and vuality and are generally provided as fully fitted a

S. Balme et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 74 (2005) 903–907 905

Fig. 1. Meeting room size: 7.6 cm.

dedicated devices. They need less technical knowledgefor installation and using.

During meetings local participants can use an inter-active whiteboard. This is a touch-sensitive projectionscreen that allows interaction by directly touching theboard rather than using a keyboard or mouse, to con-trol the presentation and annotate the slides. Further,all interactions are archived and can be replayed afterthe discussion.

The addition of a conference phone is recommendedas backup device in all remote participation rooms, ifthe network is overloaded for example. In this caseDRFC subscribes to a multi-point conference phoneservice: “France Telecom Conference Service”. Theconference is previously opened by the organizer whodials an extra code, then every participants dial the samereserved phone number. The organizer is invoiced thebasic local fee for each caller, as each participant isinvoiced the normal cost of the call. It should also benoted that many of our users content themselves withsimple phone + screen share conferences.

In common with the DRFC policy of managingmeeting rooms, we have implemented a rigorous book-ing method, using Outlook, available on line to usersand secretaries. This will shortly be extended to provideall technical data (phone numbers, protocol, meeting

subject, contact, etc.) also to the remote collabora-tor.

We would like to emphasise here that the real suc-cess of this room, since its inauguration, has been itsflexibility, from simple phone conferencing, to full col-laborative engineering meetings.

5. Sharing presentations and supervisionscreens

Sharing a presentation or a supervision graphicinterface is achieved by sharing a screen. This iseasily performed with the free software Virtual Net-work Computing (VNC) [7]. Unlike video whichtransmits fast pictures with a limited resolution, thisscreen sharing transmits a slow but perfect high res-olution copy of screens containing complex scientificfigures.

VNC is originally a remote visualisation and controlsoftware which allows you to view and interact withone computer (the “server”) using a simple program(the “viewer” client) on another computer anywhereon the internet. VNC is freely and publicly availableon most platforms. The viewer is either a light andeasy application to install, or a Java applet.

906 S. Balme et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 74 (2005) 903–907

Fig. 2. VNC screen sharing size: 16 cm.

For security reasons, we have modified the opensource code to prevent any interaction, so we do not usethe VNC remote handling functionality. To do this theVNC source Unix application or source PC screen mustbe protected by a “VNC proxy”, a Unix server actingas a relay between the source and the clients (Fig. 2). Itaccepts connections from the viewers and passes themon to the servers. It takes in charge the network loadand hides the real sources protecting them from anypossible action.

At Tore Supra the VNC sources are the PC used forthe presentations in meeting rooms, and some screensor mimics displayed by supervision applications in theTore Supra control room, such as (Fig. 3):

• The chronology of a pulse.• The pulse diary with few comments.

Fig. 3. TSTV examples size: 7.6 cm.

• The real-time waveforms of some essential signals.• The control–command mimics.

These screens are visualized remotely by our collab-oration partners, but also locally by our physicists fromtheir office so as to follow experiments in progress.

6. Participating remotely to experiments

One can remotely participate in the Tore Supra pro-gramme in many ways:

• Like most fusion laboratories we have interfaced ourspecific data access library, with MDS Plus[8], sothat it is possible to read (but not write) Tore Supradata, in a standard way, with a MatLab or C program.

• We have implemented, with the Canadian laboratoryINRS, a program which transfers the main events ofa Tore Supra pulse (preparation, launch, chronology,end of acquisition, end. . .) to the MDS Plus eventserver, so that they are available for any programwhich subscribe to them.

• We developed such a subscriber program, a Javaapplication called “Shotlistener”, included in an

S. Balme et al. / Fusion Engineering and Design 74 (2005) 903–907 907

auto-installable package. Once installed and started,Shotlistener establishes a connection to the MDSPlus server, subscribes to a parameterised list of shotevents, and alerts the user, by a visual or sound warn-ing, when a selected event occurs. Hence, this cantrigger some actions linked to the shot, such as post-analysing data or visualising supervision screens.

• A dedicated space has been reserved in the ToreSupra control room[9], in order to remotely oper-ate one diagnostic. The local physicist works withtwo PC, one drives a VRVS videoconference andthe remote physicist’s screen, the other runs theTore Supra diagnostic applications, also remotelybut read-only available via our VNC proxy. Providedthat the equivalent installation is set up remotely, thelocal and the remote physicists can speak, see eachother, and share their respective screens as if workingside by side.

7. Conclusion

There is a strong interest for the remote participa-tion tools, which allow to exchange ideas, to debate,to manage projects, to participate at experiments, fromanywhere in the world Fusion community. Consideringthe rapid evolution of the communication technologies,

this interest can only increase and these tools becomevery common. Nevertheless, it will remain a real chal-lenge to provide a virtual control room, capable toremotely operate a tokamak. In the extreme, this mightbe considered as part of the ITER international effort.Indeed, this very interesting problem involves manytopics, as security, network, graphical user interfacedesign, political choices, and must also take in consid-eration human behaviour. Surely that will require a fullcollaboration and the Tore Supra team is ready to sharehis experience to contribute actively to all ITER remoteparticipation issues.

References

[1] Private and secure instant messaging for the EFDA community,passworded web site:http://messenger.efda.org/.

[2] Nuxeo CPS:http://www.nuxeo.org/cps.[3] Zope:http://www.zope.org/.[4] Concurrent Versions System:http://www.gnu.org/software/cvs/.[5] Virtual Rooms Videoconferencing System:http://www.vrvs.

org/.[6] International Telecommunication Union:http://www.itu.int/

home/index.html.[7] RealVNC:http://realvnc.com.[8] MSD PLUS:http://www.mdsplus.org/intro/index.shtml.[9] J.M. Theis, J.M. Larsen, Remote experiment participation on

Tore Supra, F.E.D. 71 (2004) 257–261.