Wearable PC users wait for devices to go mainstream

SEATTLE (AP) — Say you're so hooked to your mouse, keyboard and computer monitor you can hardly tear yourself away from your terminal. You don't have to. You can wear your computer. Thad Starner, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, has been walking around with his for nearly a decade. "Most people who stand in line at the airport are just waiting there, bored. I'm writing the next chapter of my book or reading e-mail," Starner said Tuesday at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers at the University of Washington. Starner's gear, which costs about $4,500, includes a micro-optical monitor hooked to his glasses, a cell phone-shaped keyboard he straps to the back of one hand and a small black bag that holds a 1-pound computer.

		Courtnee Papastathis models a HandsFreeMobile e-Belt wearable computer during a fashion show.
		By Elaine Thompson, AP

"We're going through another computer revolution," said Starner, who, as a student, founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Wearable Computing Project in 1993 and is now part owner of Charmed Technology Wireless Eyewear, based in Santa Monica, Calif.

"Just like the change from the mainframe to the minicomputer and ... the minicomputer to the PC, we're going to have a switch to wearable, which is going to completely change the way people think about computing."

Microvision, based in Bothell northeast of Seattle, markets a personal display system called Nomad. It's a headset with a two-dimensional display window that hangs in front of one eye.

The company has sold 70 of the devices — which can be connected to other computer systems — since they went on the market early this year.

Surgeons are beginning to use it during image-guided operations like hip replacements. Normally, they'd have to turn their heads to watch a television monitor showing them where they're supposed to cut. When they wear a Nomad, the images they need to see are right in front of their eyes, superimposed on the patient.

Some small-plane pilots use the Nomad as a way to keep their eyes on the sky and their gauges at the same time.

"They're retailing at $10,000, which obviously you and I can't buy," Microvision spokesman Matt Nichols said. "But with volume, you've got a product where the components are only $40 or $50."

The sixth annual symposium, sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, runs through Thursday.

Tuesday's lineup included a fashion show where models showed off MP3-wired jackets, arm-mounted keyboards, jackets that monitor your heart rate and various head-mounted display systems.

Some concepts aren't yet ready for the marketplace, but to wearable computer gurus, ideas can be as exciting as products.

With the cell phones, personal digital assistants and global positioning system-driven gadgets beginning to proliferate, it's only a matter of time before they all get sewn into clothing.

"Wearable computing is inevitable," said Mark Billinghurst, director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in New Zealand.