The New Body Art - Wearable Wireless Devices

Freddie writes: "This article discusses the status of wearable computers; the challenges faced by software and hardware manufacturers in developing effective and widely accepted wearable devices; and the commencement of a new paradigm for how wearable technology can create value for consumers and enterprises."

Input Output

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

Below is a snippit of the artical, and I have personally used a device such as this. I have 2 small problems.

People are not likely to change on the spur of the moment, you need more than "new hardware" to create a change. Look at mice, and keyboard games. Quake/doom/duke/etc... People still use the mouse and keyboard because it is universal and it is what they know. Your going to have to flood the market to get a new standard out, and it will have to be eaiser to use, and more productive than the original. Otherwise it just will not float. Your need both to pull it off, not just "wow" factor.

For example, Sony Computer Science Laboratories has been performing cutting-edge research on input technologies, and two of their ideas, called GestureWrist and GesturePad, could be something we are all using by the end of this decade. With the goal being to make inputs to your wearable device as conceptually unnoticeable as possible, GestureWrist is a wristwatch-type input device that recognizes human gestures by measuring changes in wrist shape and forearm movements. Networked to a visual display, GestureWrist could serve as the user's virtual mouse.

Related information

[narfbot]

There was a scientific american on pbs a while back where they actually described people as human cyborgs. I don't think they were really cyborgs, what they really were was just people wearing computers. They actually already exist, and have been around for some years. Alec Baldwin even tried it out.

I couldn't find anything about it on the scientific american, but this another article on that website [130.94.24.217], somewhat dated. I think the guy that wrote it also envisioned wearable wireless devices.

Here is a wearable computer [transmeta.com] you can even buy, meant mainly for military, or scientific use, I'm sure you can get one. It runs a transmeta [transmeta.com] crusoe chip.

The future is close, and it will be cool.

Interesting Link

[hyyx]

After reading the article, I was amazed that IBM didn't provide any links to it's own wearable PC prototype [ibm.com]. The link shows a picture, has a brief blurb, and some Q&A with Russell Budd, the inventor.

Wearable Computers are not... bad?

[w00tboy12]

Last year I did a project on wearable computers (okay, so it was in powerpoint! sue me!) and they are pretty damn interesting. Here is some linkie stuff...

http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/ [mit.edu] Actually, this is the one where I got most of my info. I suggest you visit the old site (link at bottom right). Instructions are there for building your own non-corporate wearable system. $2000-3000 is the approximate price range. If you're really interested, poke around.

Well, that's the only link I feel like giving. Have fun. Oh, yeah, that design is called the Lizzy, but there are others.

My second ever /. post ;)

Re:Tissue Heating

[ChrnosLite]

As I recall, when the handheld form factor was indroduced to cellular telephones, the power output of the devices was reduced from 3 Watts to 600 mW. One of the main reasons this was done (among others) was to keep the user from having a 3 Watt Transciever next to their head for long periods of time. While 3 Watts is not a large amount of power for RF, I recall the reasoning being brought up... Since the output of most modern wireless devices is far less powerful than a handheld analog cellular telephone, the risks do not seem extrodinary.