A tool developed specifically to assist science and operations teams during MER surface operations planning is the MERBoard, a product of the MER Human Centered Computing (HCC) Program and a new class of computing platform -- the collaborative computer.

A combination software and five-foot touchscreen, MERBoard's large interactive work surface facilitates collaboration among planning teams that can gather around the board to retrieve, view, share and annotate mission data and rover images.

The board provides an immersive work environment, while its touchscreen literally puts information at the user's fingertips, enabling the user to drag and drop data to a personal or group icon. Any data on the screen can be captured and annotated in the MERBoard's whiteboard, and content can be created on the whiteboard. One MERBoard can display what's happening on another for collaboration among people using another MERBoard.

A personal computer can be displayed or controlled from a MERBoard at the touch of a button, and data is easily transferable to and from the MERBoard and personal computers.

MERBoard is a mission enhancement that works with the mission's critical path tools provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managing the MER mission for NASA. The technology was a product of a unique proposal in 2000 to JPL that didn't pitch technologies or tools but a process for making observations and a promise to deliver recommendations for technologies and procedures that would enhance mission productivity.

During the next two years the MER HCC program's researchers interviewed and observed JPL current and previous mission staff and conducted observations during two rover exploration field tests performed in an Earth desert.

The field tests gave scientists and operations staff at JPL and at remote locations opportunities to operate a rover in a setting similar to the harsh desert martian environment. The teams worked as if the field test were a real Mars mission, collaborating to build sequence plans based on rover images, sensor and instrument data.

Meanwhile, the field training gave the MER HCC program a chance to observe the teams in action, which was critical to coming up with their useful recommendations, said MER HCC program lead Jay Trimble. "People cannot consciously describe their total work experience. We saw where existing work tools and practice could be augmented to help productivity among scientists and engineers."

During the 2001 field test, surface operations teams at JPL gathered around flip charts and laptops to create, share and view information. The groups collaborated around the information display even though the information was difficult to see from just a few feet away. The charts would sometimes become lost. Information on the pages could not be archived for multiple users' reference.

"They were using flip charts for things like brainstorming, laying out scientific hypotheses, developing long-term strategic plans for the rover... With the MERBoard, we preserved that informal mode of expression you get on a flip chart or a whiteboard but added the ability to use multiple pages and share them, remote control and view them, and save and recall at any time during the mission." Skiles said.

The informal mode of MERBoard enables the user to focus on the complexity of the task, not the tool. Multiple MERBoards will be distributed throughout JPL during mission operations, which are conducted in two buildings, across multiple floors.

The MERBoard is being extended to the Xboard architecture, a development platform for NASA. It has a plug-in architecture that allows NASA developers to add capabilities to fit any NASA environment. The technology is Java based and runs on all industry standard operating systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS-X.