Wearable Technology From Wikipedia,
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| Wearable computing is here already: How hi-tech got under our skin |
Wearable technology is related to both the field of ubiquitous computing and the history and development of wearable computers. With ubiquitous computing, wearable technology share the vision of interweaving technology into the everyday life, of making technology pervasive and interaction friction less. Through the history and development of wearable computing, this vision has been both contrasted and affirmed. Affirmed through the multiple projects directed at either enhancing or extending functionality of clothing, and as contrast, most notably through Steve Mann's concept of sousveillance. The history of wearable technology is influenced by both of these responses to the vision of ubiquitous computing.
The calculator watch, introduced in the 1980s, was one original piece of widespread worn electronics.
Ilya Fridman designed a Bluetooth headset into a pair of earrings with a hidden microphone. The Spy TIE includes a color video camera and USB Heating Gloves keep hands warm when plugged in.
Twitter users can wear a "Pocket Tweet" using a Java application and cutting out and applying a Twitter text bubble to a person's shirt, one example of Do-it-yourself wearable tech that was part of an art exhibit for the Wearable Technology AIR project in spring 2009. ZED-phones stitch headphones into beanies and headbands allowing riders, snowboarders, Drivers and Runners to stay connected, hands-free, always.
Wearable technology has applications in monitoring and realtime feedback for athletes as well. The decreasing cost of processing power and other components is encouraging widespread adoption and availability.
Transitioning to night life and entertainment industries electroluminescent shirts have appeared in concerts such as Electric Daisy Carnival and Lollapalooza. Michael Graziano Clothing has worked with such artists as Deadmau5, Coldplay and Andy Moor they are appearing in the tourism industry.
According to ABI Research due to the relative ease of compatibility with smartphones and other electronic devices, the wearable technologies market will spike to 485 million annual device shipments by 2018.
According to Forbes, 71% of 16-to-24 year olds want wearable tech.
Prototypes
Sony Ericsson teamed up with the London College of Fashion for a contest to design digital clothing, and the winner was a cocktail dress with Bluetooth technology making it light up when a call is received. Zach "Hoeken Smith" of MakerBot fame made keyboard pants during a "Fashion Hacking" workshop at a New York City creative collective. Graduate students from the Tisch School of Arts in New York designed a hoodie that sends pre-programmed text messages triggered by gesture movements.
Prototypes for digital eyewear with heads up display (HUD) are being developed. The US military employs headgear with displays for soldiers using a technology called holographic optics.
Festivals and Shows
Amsterdam's 5 Days Off festival included a free show called "Wearable Technology: Powered Art and Fashion." In 2014, the Fashion Law Institute held a panel discussion, which focused on patents, about wearable technology.
FashioNXT 2014 Oct 8-11 in Portland, Oregon, US held a Wearable Technology Fashion Competition. http://www.fashionxt.net
WearableTechnology 2015 show on Mar 10-11, 2015 in London, England, promises to be the biggest single gathering dedicated to wearables.
Use
Wearable Technology is on the rise in personal and business use. In healthcare, many examples exist to date. Google Glass is a much noted device, offering promising technology but to many, pricey and awkward in use. Smartwatches so far have not been deployed much, as limited functionality and clunky aesthetics may get in the way. Some other devices are already in use, others still on the horizon—that wearables could be useful in professional and patiënt settings. Medical Professionals such as Google Glass Surgeon have now organised themselves in WATCH-Society the Wearable Technology in Healthcare Society, in order to search for collaboration and valid use of wearable technology in healthcare. The Society is a not-for profit organisation and open to all envisioning co-creation, collaboration and scrutinization in order to help healthcare from multiple professional viewpoints.
Modern Technologies
On April 16, 2013, Mountain View corporation Google allowed for those that pre-ordered its wearable glasses at the 2012 Google I/O conference to pick up the device. This day marked the official launch of Google Glass, a device that brings rich text and notifications as well as other information straight to your eyes. The device also has a 5 MP camera and records 720p. Its various functions are activated via voice command. The company also launched the Google Glass companion app, MyGlass, the day before the official launch on April 15. The New York Times's Google Glass App is the first third-party Glass App and it reads articles and news's summaries.It is also the first media app for Google Glass.
The next wave of wearable devices expected to hit the market will be smartwatches. ABI Research forecasts 1.2 million smart watches will be shipped in 2013 due to high penetration of smartphones in many world markets, the wide availability and low cost of MEMS sensors, energy efficient connectivity technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0, and a flourishing app ecosystem. On March 19, 2014, Motorola unveiled Moto 360 smart watch powered by Android Wear, a modified version of Android designed specifically for smart watches and other wearables.
The Cuff company offers fashionable security electronic wearables, which allow users to send hidden alerts. The device syncs to the user's smartphone.
At CES 2014, wearable technology was a popular topic, and the event was coined the "The Wearables, Appliances, Cars, and Bendable TVs Show" by many industry influencers. Several wearable products that were showcased include Smart watches, SmartBands, Smart Jewelry, glasses, and earbuds. Valencell PerformTek technology powered many of the new products unveiled at the show, including the iriverON earbuds, which provide users with the most accurate and comprehensive health and fitness metrics through the ear. The iriverON requires no bracelet to wear or dongle to clip on; users just monitor their heart rate, distance, cadence, speed, and calories burned while listening to music.
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Wearable Technology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wearable Computer From Wikipedia,
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| The WIMM One, an Android powered wearable computer. |
One of the main features of a wearable computer is consistency. There is a constant interaction between the computer and user, i.e. there is no need to turn the device on or off. Another feature is the ability to multi-task. It is not necessary to stop what you are doing to use the device; it is augmented into all other actions. These devices can be incorporated by the user to act like a prosthetic. It can therefore be an extension of the user’s mind and/or body.
Many issues are common to the wearables as with mobile computing, ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing research communities, including power management and heat dissipation, software architectures, wireless and personal area networks.
Areas of Applications
In many applications, user's skin, hands, voice, eyes, arms as well as motion or attention are actively engaged as the physical environment.
Wearable computer items have been initially developed for and applied with e.g.
- sensory integration, e.g. to help people see better (whether in task-specific applications like camera-based welding helmets, or for everyday use like computerized "digital eyeglass") or to help people understand the world better,
- behavioral modeling,
- health care monitoring systems,
- service management
- mobile phones
- smartphones
- electronic textiles
- fashion design
Today still "wearable computing" is a topic of active research, with areas of study including user interface design, augmented reality, pattern recognition. The use of wearables for specific applications or for compensating disabilities as well as supporting elderly people steadily increases. The application of wearable computers into fashion design is evident through Microsoft's prototype of "The Printing Dress" at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers in June 2011.
History
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| Evolution of Steve Mann's WearComp wearable computer from backpack based systems of the 1980s to his current covert systems. |
A computer is not merely a time-keeping or calculating device, but rather a user-programmable item for complex algorithms, interfacing, and data management. By this definition, the wearable computer was invented by Steve Mann, in the late 1970s:
Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, was hailed as the father of the wearable computer and the ISSCC's first virtual panelist, by moderator Woodward Yang of Harvard University (Cambridge Mass.).The development of wearable items has taken several steps of miniaturization from discrete electronics over hybrid designs to fully integrated designs, where just one processor chip, a battery and some interface conditioning items make the whole unit.
— IEEE ISSCC 8 Feb. 2000
1600s
The Qing Dynasty saw the introduction of a fully functional abacus on a ring, which could be used while it was being worn.
1800s
The first wearable timepiece was made by watchmaker Breguet for the Queen of Naples in 1810. It was a small ladies' pocket watch on a bracelet chain. Again, a wristwatch is a "wearable computer" in the sense that it can be worn, and that it also computes time. But it is not a general-purpose computer in the sense of the modern word.
Military use of wearables: In Girard-Perregaux made wristwatches for the German Imperial Navy after an artillery officer complained that it was not convenient to use both hands to operate a pocket watch while timing his bombardments. The officer had strapped a pocket watch onto his wrist and his superiors liked his solution, and thus asked La Chaux-de-Fonds to travel to Berlin to begin production of small pocket watches attached to wrist bracelets.
Early acceptance of wristlets by men serving in the military was not widespread, though:
Wristlets, as they were called, were reserved for women, and considered more of a passing fad than a serious timepiece. In fact, they were held in such disdain that many a gentlemen were actually quoted to say they "would sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch".
— International Watch Magazine
1960s and 1970s
In 1961 mathematicians Edward O. Thorp, and Claude Shannon built some computerized timing devices to help them cheat at the game of roulette. One such timer was concealed in a shoe, another in a pack of cigarettes. Various versions of this apparatus were built in the 1960s and 1970s. Detailed pictures of a shoe-based timing device can be viewed at www.eyetap.org.
Thorp refers to himself as the inventor of the first "wearable computer" In other variations, the system was a concealed cigarette-pack sized analog computer designed to predict the motion of roulette wheels. A data-taker would use microswitches hidden in his shoes to indicate the speed of the roulette wheel, and the computer would indicate an octant of the roulette wheel to bet on by sending musical tones via radio to a miniature speaker hidden in a collaborator's ear canal. The system was successfully tested in Las Vegas in June 1961, but hardware issues with the speaker wires prevented it from being used beyond test runs. This was not a wearable computer, because it could not be repurposed during use; rather it was an example of task-specific hardware. This work was kept secret until it was first mentioned in Thorp's book Beat the Dealer (revised ed.) in 1966 and later published in detail in 1969.
The 1970s saw the rise of similar special purpose hardware timing devices, such as roulette prediction devices using next-generation technology. In particular, a group known as Eudaemonic Enterprises used a CMOS 6502 microprocessor with 5K RAM to create a shoe computer with inductive radio communications between a data-taker and bettor.
Another early wearable system was a camera-to-tactile vest for the blind, published by C.C. Collins in 1977, that converted images into a 1024-point, 10-inch square tactile grid on a vest. On the consumer end, 1977 also saw the introduction of the HP-01 algebraic calculator watch by Hewlett-Packard.
1980s
The 1980s saw the rise of more general-purpose wearable computers that fit the modern definition of "computer" by going beyond task-specific hardware to more general-purpose (e.g. reprogrammable by the user) devices. In 1981 Steve Mann designed and built a backpack-mounted 6502-based wearable multimedia computer with text, graphics, and multimedia capability, as well as video capability (cameras and other photographic systems). Mann went on to be an early and active researcher in the wearables field, especially known for his 1994 creation of the Wearable Wireless Webcam, the first example of Lifelogging.
Though perhaps not technically "wearable," in 1986 Steve Roberts built Winnebiko-II, a recumbent bicycle with on-board computer and chorded keyboard. Winnebiko II was the first of Steve Roberts' forays into nomadic computing that allowed him to type while riding.
1989-1999
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| Datalink USB Dress edition with Invasion video game. The watch crown (icontrol) can be used to move the defender left to right and the fire control is the Start/Split button on the lower side of the face of the watch at 6 o' clock |
In 1993 the Private Eye was used in Thad Starner's wearable, based on Doug Platt's system and built from a kit from Park Enterprises, a Private Eye display on loan from Devon Sean McCullough, and the Twiddler chording keyboard made by Handykey. Many iterations later this system became the MIT "Tin Lizzy" wearable computer design, and Starner went on to become one of the founders of MIT's wearable computing project. 1993 also saw Columbia University's augmented-reality system known as KARMA: Knowledge-based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance. Users would wear a Private Eye display over one eye, giving an overlay effect when the real world was viewed with both eyes open. KARMA would overlay wireframe schematics and maintenance instructions on top of whatever was being repaired. For example, graphical wireframes on top of a laser printer would explain how to change the paper tray. The system used sensors attached to objects in the physical world to determine their locations, and the entire system ran tethered from a desktop computer.
In 1994 Edgar Matias and Mike Ruicci of the University of Toronto, debuted a "wrist computer." Their system presented an alternative approach to the emerging head-up display plus chord keyboard wearable. The system was built from a modified HP 95LX palmtop computer and a Half-QWERTY one-handed keyboard. With the keyboard and display modules strapped to the operator's forearms, text could be entered by bringing the wrists together and typing. The same technology was used by IBM researchers to create the half-keyboard "belt computer." Also in 1994, Mik Lamming and Mike Flynn at Xerox EuroPARC demonstrated the Forget-Me-Not, a wearable device that would record interactions with people and devices and store this information in a database for later query. It interacted via wireless transmitters in rooms and with equipment in the area to remember who was there, who was being talked to on the telephone, and what objects were in the room, allowing queries like "Who came by my office while I was on the phone to Mark?" As with the Toronto system, Forget-Me-Not was not based on a head-mounted display.
Also in 1994, DARPA started the Smart Modules Program to develop a modular, humionic approach to wearable and carryable computers, with the goal of producing a variety of products including computers, radios, navigation systems and human-computer interfaces that have both military and commercial use. In July 1996 DARPA went on to host the "Wearables in 2005" workshop, bringing together industrial, university and military visionaries to work on the common theme of delivering computing to the individual. A follow-up conference was hosted by Boeing in August 1996, where plans were finalized to create a new academic conference on wearable computing. In October 1997, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Georgia Tech co-hosted the IEEE International Symposium on Wearables Computers (ISWC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The symposium was a full academic conference with published proceedings and papers ranging from sensors and new hardware to new applications for wearable computers, with 382 people registered for the event.
2000s
In 2002, as part of Kevin Warwick's Project Cyborg, Warwick's wife, Irena, wore a necklace which was electronically linked to Warwick's nervous system via an implanted electrode array. The color of the necklace changed between red and blue dependent on the signals on Warwick's nervous system. Dr. Bruce H Thomas and Dr. Wayne Piekarski developed the Tinmith wearable computer system to support augmented reality. This work was first published internationally in 2000 in the ISWC conference. The worked was carried out of the Wearable Computer Lab at the University of South Australia.
In the late 2000s, various Chinese companies began producing mobile phones in the form of wristwatches, the descendants of which as of 2013 include the i5 and i6, which are GSM phones with 1.8 inch displays, and the ZGPAX s5 Android wristwatch phone.
2010s
The current moves in standardization with IEEE, IETF and several industry groups (e.g. Bluetooth) leads to more various interfacing under the WPAN (wireless personal area network) and the WBAN (Wireless body area network) offer new classification of designs for interfacing and networking.
Also, the 6th-generation iPod Nano has a wristwatch attachment available to convert it to a wearable wristwatch computer.
The developments of wearable computing now encompasses Rehabilitation Engineering, Ambulatory intervention treatment, life guard systems, Defense wearable systems.
Sony is now selling an Android compatible wrist watch called Sony SmartWatch. It must be paired with an Android phone as an additional, remote display and notification tool.
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| Google Glass, Google's head-mounted display, which was launched in 2013 |
In September 2014, Apple announced that the company is working on a smartwatch called Apple Watch. According to the New York Times, Apple has been testing both solar and wireless charging for the upcoming product.
Sport computation wearables with Valencell PerformTek technology can measure real-time body metrics that can be used to enhance any fitness training application, including heart rate, respiration rate, energy expenditure, metabolic rate, calories burned, distance traveled, steps taken, speed, VO2 max, ventilatory threshold, and recovery time.
Commercialization
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| Image of the ZYPAD wrist wearable computer from Arcom Control Systems |
Evidence of the allure of the wearable computer and the weak market acceptance is evident with market leading Panasonic Computer Solutions Company's failed product in this market. Panasonic has specialized in mobile computing with their Toughbook line for over 10 years and has extensive market research into the field of portable, wearable computing products. In 2002, Panasonic introduced a wearable brick computer coupled with a handheld or armworn touchscreen. The brick would communicate wirelessly to the screen, and concurrently the brick would communicate wirelessly out to the internet or other networks. The wearable brick was quietly pulled from the market in 2005, while the screen evolved to a thin client touchscreen used with a handstrap. (The "Brick" Computer is the CF-07 Toughbook, dual batteries, screen used same batteries as the base, 800 x 600 resolution, optional GPS and WWAN. Has one M-PCI slot and one PCMCIA slot for expansion. CPU used is a 600 MHz Pentium 3 factory under clocked to 300 MHz so it can stay cool passively as it has no fan. Micro dim ram is upgradable. The screen can be used wirelessly on other computers.)
Google has announced that it has been working on a head-mounted display-based wearable "augmented reality" device called Google Glass. An early version of the device is currently available to the US public through Google's Explorer Program.
LG and iriver have both launched earbud wearables that use Valencell PerfomTek sensor technology for accurately and continuously measuring heart rate and other biometrics, as well as various activity metrics.
Military Use
The wearable computer was introduced to the American Army in 1989 as a small computer that was meant to assist soldiers in battle. Since then, the concept has grown to include the =Land Warrior program and proposal for future systems. The most extensive military program in the wearables arena is the US Army's Land Warrior system, which will eventually be merged into the Future Force Warrior system.
F-INSAS is an Indian Military Project, designed largely with wearable computing.
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Wearable Computer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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