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IF THE TERM
“wearable computer” conjures of images of Star Trek’s Borg in your mind,
it’s not your fault. It’s those ominous eye pieces, called “near-eye
displays,” which are seemingly soldered to the user’s head in Borg-like
fashion (really, they’re attached to glasses).
And true to form, at this week’s International Symposium on Wearable
Computers, there was lively debate about topics like the best materials
for embedding electronic circuitry into fabric. But don’t sell these
super-geeks short; practicality is all the rage now. Companies with
“boring” products like Symbol Technologies Inc.’s portable bar code
scanners — the kind that scan and verify ticketholders as they enter
Seattle’s Safeco Field, for example — get just as much attention as
researchers toting electronic backpacks wearing virtual reality glasses.
It’s a simple numbers game. Attendance at
the show was down this year. In fact, only five companies and research
labs secured exhibit space. Some 250 researchers, tech workers, and
students from as far away as Tokyo and New Zealand still made the trek,
but that’s down from over 300 two years ago.
It’s not that interest in the far-flung field of wearables has
waned, said conference organizer Mark Billinghurst. Several wearables
companies are casualties of the technology stock bubble burst; other firms
are reluctant to pay for field trips like the wearables conference right
now.
So it’s up to wearables to find their
way beyond very small niche industrial and military applications, and
soon, and you could feel that in the hallways.
That’s not to say the hallways didn’t have their share of 21st
century propeller hats gliding around. But most of the researchers
insisted wearables are much more practical, and much more imminent, than
the half-human, half-computer creations that wearables once
were.
WARM AND FUZZY WEARABLES
How imminent? Last Christmas, Foster-Miller Inc., Polartec and
Land’s End went retail with heated blankets made of 4 percent metallic
fiber, the kind developed for embedding circuitry into clothing. The
result — a cozy electric blanket without any clunky, uncomfortable
electric wires.
“My wife would take it and
wrap it around herself watching TV,” said Foster-Miller business
development manager Douglas Thomson. “You wouldn’t do that with a regular
electric blanket.” |
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Thomson said 17,000 blankets were sold at $200 a pop last holiday
season, a far cry from the current wearables market.
Thomson’s firm is eyeing many such simple, sellable consumer
products that leverage what his company has learned about weaving
electronics into fabrics. In hip clubs, disco dancers like putting
flashing lights onto their blouses these days. Thomson is developing
women’s clothing with lights embedded into the fabric, for the ultimate
fashion statement.
“Light up is big right
now,” he said. Women will already pay $50 for a top; he figures they’ll
pay $10 more to wear a top with computerized lights. And as for the
garment’s washability?
“The textile people
tell me as long as it can take four washes, that’s fine. After that,
(women) want to wear something else,” he said.
Infineon Technologies AG is hoping wearable music players will also
be a fashion forward statement. At this year’s wearables fashion show, the
firm showed off its MP3 jacket. The circuitry is woven right into the
garment, with play and stop buttons lining the arm, and a walkman-style
single ear piece dangling from the collar. Flash memory cards with new
songs are tucked into a side pocket. Announced in April, the jacket is
probably two years away from retail, said spokesperson Wendy Lewis.
WHERE’S THE REAL REVOLUTION?
But a jacket that plays a few digital tunes is a far cry from the
always-at-your-fingertips full-fledged computer that the wearables crowd
has been working toward. Sitting in the audience this week were
researchers holding hobby-built, custom computers in bags slung around
their backs, tethered to a “near-eye” monitor clipped to their glasses.
Inside that tiny screen, which hovers barely two inches from the eye, is
what looks like a full-fledged computer monitor. An optical illusion, not
unlike the feeling one gets looking inside a Kaleidoscope, convinces the
user the screen is much bigger than it is. Since only one eye is occupied,
the other eye can be used to observe the outside world, or engage in
conversations. |
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In normal circumstances, talking to someone while looking through a
computer screen might be considered rude. But here, it’s considered
normal.
Even the most optimistic in this
crowd don’t think an eye-mounted computer screen will ever be really
normal, so this group is hard at work trying to decide what the term
wearable computer really means. The word itself, admits Billinghurst,
might be a detriment to the field.
“Wearables is a loaded term,” he said. “It conjures up images of
cyborgs.”
SOLAR-POWERED
JACKETS
Much of the focus so far
has been on embedding computer circuitry in clothing, creating a research
area that is sometimes called electronic textiles. But Paul Lukowicz, a
research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich,
argues that even cell phones and personal data assistants could be
considered wearable computers. He figures some day those devices will
share common components like displays, power sources, and input
mechanisms, rather than the current clunky system that sees tech-laden
workers burdened with multiple, bulky electronics.
“You’ll just have a card, for example, that you stick in your
pocket, and that will be your cell phone, or PDA. They will then configure
themselves into a system with a single display, say on your watch,” he
said.
Impossible-to-spot solar panels will
be embedded in clothes some day to power the devices, so there are no more
electricity shortages.
ALWAYS ON, ALWAYS
READY
To others, the most
critical component of wearable computers is that they are always on, and
always ready with the information a user needs.
“Even a Palm, you have to stop what you are doing and turn it on,”
Billinghurst said.
A better solution is a
computer that offers information to you precisely when you need it, but
doesn’t take all your attention to get it, a concept sometimes called
“pervasive computing.”
“Desktop computers
are designed to get all your attention,” Billinghurst said, requiring what
he called an “explicit interface.” One way to think about wearable
computers, he said, was their ability to monitor what the user is doing
and just be helpful when appropriate, something he called an “implicit
interface.”
If such an immersive computing
experience starts to sound a little like far-flung virtual reality, it is.
Wearable computer researchers have always been allied with virtual reality
developers, since the two technologies often piggy-back on each other. But
a slightly newer term, augmented reality, seemed to be carrying the day at
this year’s conference.
AUGMENTED
REALITY
Virtual reality immerses
the user in a brand new world. Augmented reality has a much humbler
objective; it simply seeks to overlay additional information on the
reality the user already sees. Microvision Inc.’s personal display system,
known as micro-optical scanning, is a good example. The firm’s $12,000
headset offers a see-through image which appears to hover a few feet in
front of the user, but doesn’t obstruct the user’s view — similar to
heads-up displays offered in some high-end cars today. Technicians
repairing airplanes, for example, can call up schematics and effectively
overlay them precisely on the mechanical systems they are fixing. It
eliminates tedious back-and-forth, look at the manual, look at the system,
look back at the manual process which mechanics the world over are used
to.
“It’s called ‘remoting the display,’”
said Microvision’s Matt Nichols. “A completely portable display ... can
really increase job performance.”
Augmented
reality will have other applications, too, he said. The 2004 Olympics
committee has considered similar technology for Athens tourists. Visitors
who look at ancient ruins through such a display will see them virtually
restored to their original architecture.
In
fact, these kinds of virtual displays may ultimately be the first way most
consumers feel the impact of wearable computer research. Microvision is
one of several companies talking to cell phone manufacturers about
incorporating that kind of projection display in a cell phone screen.
Micro-optical displays have been tested with PDA devices, too,
Billinghurst said.
That would provide a
ready solution to the problem of screen size that phone makers face as
they try to convince consumers to use mobile devices to access the
Internet, watch movies, and perform other visual-intensive operations.
Microvision has also talked to car manufacturers about using such displays
as part of entertainment systems in cars.
At
that point, it could hardly be called a wearable computer any more. But it
would also mean wearable computers had moved far beyond their current
niche applications, and that would suit Billinghurst just fine.
“The definition of wearables is really very broad,” he
said. “Some of the techniques being used are very far out, but some really
will be used in the near term.”
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Napster or not, file swaps continue
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