Vol.3 No.2 2010

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Research paper : Cyber Assist project as service science (H. Nakashima et al.)−122−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.3 No.2 (2010) 3 The subtitleComment (Motoyuki Akamatsu)The subtitle states that the project is “ten years too early”, but the reason is not clear in the first manuscript. If this is an important claim, you should elaborate more on the reason why it was difficult to perform at the time, or the reason why you expect that it would do better now.Question (Naoto Kobayashi)Does the subtitle “a project that began ten years too early” mean that the world was premature to understand the importance of “human-centered situated information service” that is the core concept of Cyber Assist, and that the three years of activity was too short to make the concept be recognized by the world? Or, can we understand that the world has now begun to understand its importance independent of CARC’s activity?Answer (Hideyuki Nakashima)At the current moment, we can simply say that we are doing service engineering, for instance. However, we had to explain a lot at the time. We are proud that we were ten years ahead (our external advisory board said so). I don’t want to claim that only CARC was the exception, however. There were others and we shared the same resistance of being at the leading edge. Our activity alone did not make the world as it is. But if our center went on for ten years rather than three years, its message would have better reached out to the world.That having been said, the most significant aspect of being too early is that we failed to provide any commercially used “practical system” to the world.4 Technology for Cyber AssistComment (Motoyuki Akamatsu)A reader expects to understand technological aspects of Cyber Assist. To be more specific, more concrete description of the process in which you considered “both the top-down requirements and the bottom-up constraint of research resources” should be provided in section “2.2. Concrete research goals and approach toward them” to comply with the scope of Synthesiology.Answer (Hideyuki Nakashima)I agree that if we could analyze and clearly describe the process of considering “both the top-down requirements and the bottom-up constraint of research resources”, it would be a very valuable document. However, our decision was made through weekly meetings, and it took very long to focus on our final shape. We cannot analyze it to make it describable. I am sorry but we could only write “We held a meeting of all researchers once a week, and in the early stage of the center’s activity, we concentrated on connecting each member’s specialty and interest to the research goal of the center. The resulting diagram with concrete and detailed research themes is shown as Fig. 2.” and add the corresponding figure.5 The resulting technology of research and developmentComment (Motoyuki Akamatsu)It is written that Cyber Assist aims at grounding digital information into the real world, and that the center consists of location-based communication, My-Button, intelligent content and user interface. Those are in terms of technology, not sub-goals for Cyber Assist. If possible, please explain the relationships between chapter 2 and chapter 3 using a diagram, so that readers have a better understanding of the research scenario from the view point of technological elements.Answer (Hideyuki Nakashima)Yes, our description was not clear on that point. We added a description and a diagram (Fig. 2) in section 2.2. Moreover, since we tried to explain all research elements and made the main story obscure, we eliminated some of them.Since we deleted the description on a “proposal of new transportation systems” from the paper, let me briefly explain about optimum route guidance using car navigation systems here. The current navigation system is known to have a problem that the system becomes less effective as the ratio of cars using the system increases. As the current system feeds back information on traffic congestion with some time delay, undesired oscillation of the feedback system takes place. We solved the problem completely by using future projection based on multi-agent simulation. The important point is that the solution is applicable using the current technologies only. We omitted this research issue because of the shortage of space and the whole story of CARC could be told without this. Let us note that we are currently preparing to apply this technology in Hakodate area by a team of Future University Hakodate and AIST plus some others. It is an exercise of service engineering for an actual city.6 Role of demonstration for “synthesiology”Comment (Motoyuki Akamatsu)I suppose that the implementation and demonstration of a system lead to the discovery of new problems or important issues and then contribute to the next phase of research, as some of the previous papers of Synthesiology reported. Please describe the details of findings and feedbacks to new research issues discovered from your demonstrations.Answer (Hideyuki Nakashima)One of the problems is that the Cyber Assist Research Center dissolved in the middle of Aichi Expo, and I could not get hold of research details after then. We nevertheless tried to cover the issue as much as possible and included Note 8).7 Assessment of the research outcomesComment (Motoyuki Akamatsu)You mention the tally method of information storing as an unfinished research agenda. From the description in section 5.2, however, I suspect that you may have chosen a goal theoretically unattainable by digital technology. If this is the case, will you describe how the impossibility became clear in the course of the research?Answer (Hideyuki Nakashima)We believed from the initial stage that the “tally” problem should be solved by “digital + real”. Even if the problem cannot be solved with only digital technology, it does not mean it is unsolvable. Although we could not find any effective methods, we still regard it as an interesting theme for information technology. We added some description to clarify this point.8 SuicaComment (Motoyuki Akamatsu)At the end of section 2.2, there is a reference to Suica with respect to the fact that CoBIT is based on a similar concept. Suica is close to the idea of Cyber Assist in its location-based concept, user’s initiative and privacy protection. It helps the understanding of users to have detailed discussion of the relationship between them because one side is already familiar to them.Answer (Hideyuki Nakashima)We added a comparison with Suica at the end of CoBIT section (4.1).9 Research institutes and research centers of AISTComment (Naoto Kobayashi)In the earlier version of the manuscript, there was a statement, “In service engineering, it is important to separate two kind of research units as in AIST: basic research oriented research institutes, and service oriented research centers” (section 6.1)

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