Wearable Computers !!!

Reflections on ISWC'97

by Johan Montelius
SICS Intelligent Systems Laboratory Personal Information Systems


Lingua Trekka
"... Microphones a re located at the front of her neckline, and speakers for simultaneous languages translation..."
".. The tattoo on her midrif is a universal immunization allowing Irena to cross borders without quarantine"
"... the chest piece is equipped with a removable mini-screen."

The First International Symposium on Wearable Computers held at MIT media-lab was an inspiration for future work in the area of personal information systems.

Presentations

Evaluation Studies

There were three evaluation studies. A summary of them all could be that input devices and displays are hard to use and that an augmented reality system not necessarily aids a professional. The presentation by the HCII at CMU showed how hard it is to integrate computer support in a real situation. Even having to shade the display with the hand can constitute a problem.

A Touring machine

Columbia University presented their portable out-door augmented reality system. The system consists of a differential GPS receiver, a WaveLan 2Mbit radio link, a head-worn display and head tracker. By keeping track of the position and orientation of the head the system will superimpose textual information about buildings in the neighborhood (campus area).

Impressive system, especially interesting for projects that think about using GPS systems for positioning. Reported problems with the low brightness of both the head-mounted and hand-held displays when used out-doors (not a problem during the dark winter in Stockholm :-)

Boeing

David Mizell form Boeing held a very good invited talk where he presented their experience in a real attempt to use a see-through head-mounted display in production. The task was to add wires to a large board. This is traditionally done by having a custom made board with drawn lines where the wires should go. Additional information was taken from a manual. They replaced both the lines and the textual information by superimposing them an the display.

The problem is of course to keep track of the users head. This was first done with a head mounted camera that tracked dots painted on the board. The problem was that the wires covered the dots and when too many wires were added the system lost its track. The second system they tried was based on ultra-sound triangulation. This system worked better.

A very good presentations of practical problems but the application might not be the most natural for a AR system. Couldn't the task be solved by having a pre-painted board and audio instructions or why not by a robot. But it show that it is very hard to construct a working AR system even in a controlled situation.


The Chef
"What's cooking?"

Products and Companies

The Via Wearable, wearable PC, was very impressive in size and design. It fits around your waist and features a complete PC with duplex audio, PCMCIA-card, two serial ports etc. It cost around $5000 and runs for hours on its batteries. The mockup of next years system looked even better. This system is as far I can tell a very nice platform to build on.

Interactive Solutions sells a portable Pentium based computer. Their system is more powerful but also larger and not as slim as the ViaWearable system.

The motion tracker IS-300 from InterSense was another impressive product. It is impressively fast and accurate. If you twist it to quick it will synchronize it self after a second. The drawback is that it consumes 8W i.e. you'll have to carry some extra batteries around if you want to be mobile.

A company that sells complete wearable positioning systems is GeoPerception. They showed a demonstration of a GIS application were a road-worker could see underground constructions through a transparent head-mounted-display. Interesting company, take a look at their web site!

MicroOptical Corporation presented a display that is integrated in an ordinary (well almost) pair of glasses.

VirtualVision sells a see-through head mounted display V-Cap 1000

Seattle Sight Systems has two see-through head mounted systems.

Humionics is what Maintenance and Repair Support Systems calls human/computer integration. I cant find them on the web.

The Twiddler, the pocket keyboard, is a very popular input device. I don't personally find it comfortable to use but I have only tried it on a couple of times. The people that use it look happy. One problem is of course that it occupies the right hand (if you don't learn how to write with your left).


The Citizen
Got the time?

jm@sics.se www.sics.se


Firms tag workers to improve efficiency
David Hencke
Tuesday June 07 2005
The Guardian


Workers in warehouses across Britain are being "electronically tagged" by being asked to wear small computers to cut costs and increase the efficient delivery of goods and food to supermarkets, a report revealed yesterday.

New US satellite- and radio-based computer technology is turning some workplaces into "battery farms" and creating conditions similar to "prison surveillance", according to a report from Michael Blakemore, professor of geography at Durham University.

The technology, introduced six months ago, is spreading rapidly, with up to 10,000 employees using it to supply household names such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Boots and Marks & Spencer.

Now trade unionists want safeguards to be introduced to protect worker privacy.

Under the system workers are asked to wear computers on their wrists, arms and fingers, and in some cases to put on a vest containing a computer which instructs them where to go to collect goods from warehouse shelves.

The system also allows su permarkets direct access to the individual's computer so orders can be beamed from the store. The computer can also check on whether workers are taking unauthorised breaks and work out the shortest time a worker needs to complete a job.

Academics are worried that the system could make Britain the most surveyed society in the world. The country already has the largest number of street security cameras.

Martin Dodge, a researcher at the centre for advanced spatial analysis at University College London, said: "These de vices mark the total 'disappearance of disappearance' where the employee is unable to do anything without the machine knowing or monitoring."

In his report for the GMB union, Prof Blakemore said the new technology was raising a host of ethical issues, with the danger that the computer was taking over the human rather than humans using computers.

There is also concern that the new technology might create new industrial injuries because of the need for workers to make repetitive move ments with their arms and wrists, similar to repetitive strain injuries caused by overusing computers.

But the companies say the system makes the delivery of food more efficient, cuts out waste, reduces theft and can reorder goods more quickly.

One firm, Peacock Retail Group, claims workers like the system. The company, which has a modern centre in Nantgarw, south Wales, where employees have 28 wearable computers and six mounted on trucks, says the system has a positive impact on team morale. "Everybody likes the wearables because they are comfortable and easy to use. The result is the team finds it easier to do the job," it says on the company website.

A spokeswoman for Tesco last night insisted that the company was not using the technology to monitor the staff and said it was making employees' work easier and reducing the need for paper.

But at the GMB's annual conference in Newcastle yesterday one of the union's national officers, Paul Campbell, said: "We are having reports of people walking out of jobs after a few days' work, in some cases just a few hours. They are all saying that they don't like the job because they have no input. They just followed a computer's instructions."

Paul Kenny, acting general secretary, said: "The GMB is no Luddite organisation but we will not stand idly by to see our members reduced to automatons. The use of this technology needs to be redesigned to be an aid to the worker rather than making the worker its slave.

"The supermarkets that rely on just-in-time shelf-filling rather than holding buffer stocks are incredibly prof itable companies. They can well afford to operate a humanised supply team."

Other monitoring devices are being developed in the US, including ones that can check on the productivity of secretaries by measuring the number of key strokes on their word processors; satellite technology is also being developed to monitor productivity in manufacturing jobs.

Two London firms are considering using satellites to direct sandwich board holders, making sure they are not shirking and moving them to areas with more people.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

computerised smart patch for clothing::::
By Pratap Ravindran
www.thehindubusinessline.com

THE World Trade Organisation says that, with the lifting of import quotas next year, India would triple its share of the US clothing market. Captains of the Indian information technology industry assure us that the country has what it takes to be an IT super-power. Put the two together and you get smart fabrics - something that the country should be looking at.

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed computerised fabric patches which when put together in different ways can create a range of information-providing or environment-sensing objects such as a smart handbag or a belt.

According to the developers of these patches, Adrian Cable, Gauri Nanda and Michael Bove of the MIT Media Lab, each patch holds a functional unit of the system - a microprocessor, memory and either a radio transceiver, a sensor, a microphone, batteries or a display.

A patch can be populated with different components, ranging from Bluetooth transmitters to a cut-down PC motherboard.

To make it, the circuit board inside is coated with a hard transparent resin and padded with a thin layer of foam before being encapsulated in any chosen fabric. The patches are joined using Velcro modified to enable electrical as well as physical connections. Wires from the circuit board are attached to silver-coated contacts in the Velcro so that data and power can flow from one module to the other.

Users can fashion and refashion, using square or triangular patches, an endless variety of objects such as bags, belts, scarves and curtains.

Pervasive computing has been gaining traction for a while now. Some months ago, scientists at the Institute of Physical Electronics at the University of Stuttgart announced the development of synthetic fibres that could generate electricity when exposed to light. They pointed out that the fibres could be woven into machine-washable clothes to make the ultimate in portable solar cells and, thereby, boost the development of wearable computers.

Quite simply, their discovery meant that people can look forward to their jacket or sweater to provide the power they need to operate a palmtop computer, a cell phone or an MP3 player - as long as they are not skulking around in dark places.

However, a basic problem that confronted those in the field of pervasive computing till recently was the impossibility of configuring wearable computers and sensors to handle different jobs.

With the patches now developed by researchers at MIT, this problem has been licked and users can easily swap modules to handle different functions.

To illustrate, the MIT researchers talk about a bag that can help people who are prone to forget things. They have made a bag equipped with a module containing a radio antenna and a receiver and programmed to listen for signals from radio frequency identification tags on objects such as cell phones or keys or anything else usually kept in a bag.

When the bag is picked up, a sensor module in the bag's handle detects the fact that it has been picked up and triggers a reader to run through a list of objects that the computer module has been programmed to check out. If an item on the list is not detected, it uses a voice synthesiser module in another patch to warn the user that he or she has forgotten the cell phone or the key.

The MIT researchers say that they plan to make to the system smarter by adding, for instance, a Bluetooth chip.