IEEE Web Portal for the Artificial Intelligence Learning Center

This page is intended to provide updates, reminders, and public notes for the development effort for the AILC.  This page should be editable by members of the development team so that updates, edits, and other inputs can be made.

Initial notes:

The end in mind is to have 3 rooms inside of the AILC:

* AI ROOM - Default state is "History of Artificial Intelligence (AI)." Using a room remote, you'll be able to learn, see, and interact with everything AI using either a web portal or by selecting to demonstrate the AI technology you want to see inside of the room in SL.  When you select that AI technology, the room reconfigures to demonstrate the selected technology.

* ROBOTICS ROOM - Default state is "History of Robotics."  It will have a remote control inside the room similar to the one for the AI room with a focus on robotics technologies.

* GATHERING PLACE - This is the easiest room and is our first to demo the technology.  It will be reconfigurable with a room remote that reconfigures the room for different needs.  This room is meant to be used for social functions and classes.  Right now it's in a default state for social gatherings.  Like to have 2 additional states for large and small classrooms.  Would also be nice if we could setup a Drupal server for uploading slideshows for free using the University of Edinburgh's technology.

One of the challenges with this application is that each room will only be able to be configured to show 1 technology at a time.  So if we have say 10 people inside the room all clicking on the remote, only 1 thing could be shown in SL at a time.  Some ways to mitigate this include:

(1) Use web services to provide similar data for avatars to surf through the SL web browser

(2) Provide a "Wait" function where the avatar currently using the room is asked if they want to allow another avatar to take control. 

(3) Ideal would be to provide a unique experience on the client side instead of the server side.  That way every avatar couold see what they want, but I'm not sure if that is technologically feasible at this point.