Wearable Computing
Wearable Computing
Editor: Paul Lukowicz n University of Passau n paul.lukowicz@uni-passau.de
From Backpacks to Smartphones: Past, Present, and Future of Wearable Computers
Oliver Amft and Paul Lukowicz
T
he 5th International Symposium on Wearable Computing in 2001 (ISWC 01) devoted an entire session to system design. More important, people wearing a broad range of wearable systems filled the conference halls. The exhibition and gadget show, both with a strong focus on wearable hardware, were the centerpiece of the conference. Among the systems shown (and worn) were the IBM Linux Watch, the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Figure 1. CharmIT. Charmed Technologies began selling this wearable computer as the CharmIT Wearable Computing Kit in 2000.
SPOT platform, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIThrill, the ETH WearARM, and the CharmIT system (see Figure 1) that originated at GeorgiaTech (which has been the “workhorse” of wearable enthusiasts for many years). By contrast, at ISWC 08 not a single paper dealt with computing platforms. More tellingly, only two participants wore computer systems, and no one showed any new platforms at the exhibition. At the same time, by our estimate, around 30 percent (probably more) of the audience had iPhones and comparable smart phones and were using them to access the Internet on a regular basis. Does that mean that the smart phone has made the wearable computer obsolete? And where does the rise of the smart phone leave wearable computing research? While voices in the community are talking about the smart phone bringing the “death of the wearable computer” (a panel with this title was actually proposed for ISWC two years ago), we believe that the opposite is true. Today’s smart phones in many ways represent the culmination of the ideas that drove wearable systems research in the past. They offer a platform to explore core wearable research topics such as sens-
ing, context awareness, wearable interfaces,
Editor: Paul Lukowicz n University of Passau n paul.lukowicz@uni-passau.de
From Backpacks to Smartphones: Past, Present, and Future of Wearable Computers
Oliver Amft and Paul Lukowicz
T
he 5th International Symposium on Wearable Computing in 2001 (ISWC 01) devoted an entire session to system design. More important, people wearing a broad range of wearable systems filled the conference halls. The exhibition and gadget show, both with a strong focus on wearable hardware, were the centerpiece of the conference. Among the systems shown (and worn) were the IBM Linux Watch, the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
Figure 1. CharmIT. Charmed Technologies began selling this wearable computer as the CharmIT Wearable Computing Kit in 2000.
SPOT platform, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIThrill, the ETH WearARM, and the CharmIT system (see Figure 1) that originated at GeorgiaTech (which has been the “workhorse” of wearable enthusiasts for many years). By contrast, at ISWC 08 not a single paper dealt with computing platforms. More tellingly, only two participants wore computer systems, and no one showed any new platforms at the exhibition. At the same time, by our estimate, around 30 percent (probably more) of the audience had iPhones and comparable smart phones and were using them to access the Internet on a regular basis. Does that mean that the smart phone has made the wearable computer obsolete? And where does the rise of the smart phone leave wearable computing research? While voices in the community are talking about the smart phone bringing the “death of the wearable computer” (a panel with this title was actually proposed for ISWC two years ago), we believe that the opposite is true. Today’s smart phones in many ways represent the culmination of the ideas that drove wearable systems research in the past. They offer a platform to explore core wearable research topics such as sens-
ing, context awareness, wearable interfaces,