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Two Scoops Of Wearable Computers
miester writes: "A bunch of engineering students were assigned to create wearable computers for their 4th year thesis at the University of Toronto." There's actually great gobs of links there to research-oriented stuff on wearables.
Data overlays on vision are a failed idea? When did this happen? Last i checked nobody'd actually come up with a system that does this at a high enough resolution or low enough cost to even qualify as a tried idea, much less failed one.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
hmmm, another fad, just like pogs, and magic cards, and then beanie babies and finally pokemon, do i sense a pattern ??
Oddly enough Magic has neither disappeared nor declined in popularity. It is rapidly becoming the premier intelectual sport of the world attracting spectators and players from over 50 different countries. The M:TG national and world competitions are regularly broadcast on ESPN2 and as rapidly as the older players are growing out of it new players are coming in. Admittedly a lot of us can't stand the way the game is going in recent years, but we still enjoy the game as much as ever. I doubt it will die out any more than Poker or Chess did. Even if WotC goes out of business and stops printing new sets the players will still enjoy the game, will still play it, and the Duelist Convocation will probably still hold huge tournaments.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The pages you are looking at have being around for over four years now - this is how long I have being a student at UofT and I have seing these pages for the first time over three years ago. The pages were created for Navigator 2.0 and have not being modified ever since. I have already posted the link to these pages about five months ago on /. as a response to some article about wearables. Sometimes I meet Steve Mann on the streets at UofT. The guy always has a computer on him - I wonder sometimes whether he's got a girlfriend or a wife and if he does, what does she think about his hobby. BTW this brings up an interesting question - can you wear computers everywhere on the body?
You can't handle the truth.
On a somewhat related topic, here's a link to a Slashdot-style news site that deals with wearable & mobile computing devices: The Gravity Well
There's this great bit in Infinite Jest where Wallace talks about the rise and fall of, essentially, videophones. It's hilarious and insightful and I can't begin to do it justice here, but a sketch goes something like this: videophones (in this mildly futuristic book) shattered the illusion most people enjoyed while talking on the phone; namely, that the person on the other end of the line was giving them his/her full and undivided attention. When you talk on the phone, you can be doing whatever -- picking your nose, watching TV, drying yourself off after a shower -- but somehow it never occurs to you that the person on the other end of the conversation could be doing exactly the same set of activities, could be devoting exactly the same miniscule portion of their thought to your conversation. Videphones (in Wallace's world) shattered this illusion -- you could now see exactly how bored the other person was, could tell they'd just gotten out of the shower, etc. -- and in addition tended not to project exactly the sort of image people wanted to project; ie, people always looked a little wan or something on their vidphone-screens, leading to huge problems of self-image and belonging, etc. This leads to all sorts of interesting consequences, like people buying masks representing the sort of face they wanted to project, and then eventually the advent of tableaux that would project an image of an actor, seated in a tastefully decorated room of the sort you would like people to think you own, listening thoughtfully to whatever the other person had to say. And so on, and so on.
Good stuff. Infinite Jest (by David Foster Wallace) is, IMHO, one of the best and most entertaining books published in the past decade, and is chock-full of this sort of thing; highly recommended.
I did say it was OT. :-)
Actually, the course is offered to anyone who wants to take it. The thesis students are from Eng Sci, Computer and Electrical engineering (in fact, most of the thesis students this year were from Comp and Elec). If you count thesis students along with the regular group, there were somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30-40 people working on the project this year alone. And if anyone else wants to work with the project (Industrial engineers for example) they are free to approach Steve Mann and set something up. Considering some of the groups in the Faculty, I'd say it's far less elite than most.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Here I have a whole bunch of links to further information about wearable computers and "enhanced reality" for anyone interested:
Impossible means no one's done it yet.
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Impossible means no one's done it yet.
Right now I only spend 13 hours in front of a computer a day, hope all these wearable computers come soon so I can totally avoid the real world, as opposed to partially.
This was more or less my opinion too, until recently. However, Prof. Mann had raised a few genuinely useful points on the topic back when I was studying under him (working on video drivers for the WearComps):
Video phones were another interesting idea that nobody actually wants; there are few good reasons to stare at the face of the person you're talking to, and several good reasons not to (say they just got out of the shower...). However, being able to have my co-worker look at the computer I'm trying to fix while I'm asking for advice _would_ be useful. Plus, the whole voyeuristic thrill of posessing another person's viewpoint comes in. This just strikes me as a genuinely neat and often useful idea that's easy to implement with wearable computers.
Data overlay on your vision is, for the most part, another failed idea - but there are a few niche markets where it's useful. Another design project group working at the same time I was developed an oscilliscope attachment to a WearComp, that let you view and manipulate signal traces without taking your eyes off of the probe you were sticking into the circuit. This is a Very Useful Thing when you're just trying to sanity-check a signal and are trying to hold a probe to a millimetre-wide trace while under the influence of sleep deprivation and caffiene.
Another point, which Prof. Mann didn't bring up but that I think will be the main selling point of wearable display visors:
Wearable computers don't currently have that kind of resolution, but when they do, notebooks will get a whole lot nicer. No power-hungry flat panel, and a better-looking display to boot.
In summary, I think that there are enough useful points to wearable computer technology that wearable computers will become ubiquitous in some form within the next few years.
I still prefer InfoCharms.
Y'know, i've been reading about wearable computers for quite a while now, and it still just doesn't quite click with me as being something i'd lust after.
When I was 5, I had an experience standing outside a storefront in a shopping mall that changed my life. Standing there with my dad, I saw one of the first laserdiscs. It was 1979, and this was so eye-bleedingly high tech that the crowd was 10 deep to see an ABBA laserdisc. It was a cold winter day, and a hundred or so Chicagoans stood awestruck at the sight of four musical Swedes. Everyone except me, that is. I could care less that ABBA music videos were playing. I was fixated by the frame counter..a little digital clock counter displayed in the corner of the TV screen. It blew my 5 year old mind to see anything be able to count and run so fast. The people standing infront of the store were probably saying to eachother, "Wow, this is the future! Soon we're all going to have laserdiscs. Forget VHS and Beta -- laserdiscs are where its at!"
It never happened.
A few years later, when I was about 9 or so, I was walking around with my parents in a mall near where I lived. There was a big glass case stuck on a storefront that was drawing a huge crowd..I caught a peek of what it was they were all gawking at. A little tv screen wristwatch.
The crowd, of course, considered this sort of thing to be the true wave of the future. Soon everyone would have a TV on their wrists, so we could all be better informed, and make better decisions. We'd all just tune in, and glance over at our wrists while we work to catch up on the latest news and entertainment.
That didn't happen either.
I get the same sort of feeling about wearable computers. I dont think it will ever get beyond the point of being a novelty. Like beer hats at baseball games, or shower radios, it will appeal to few, and life will go on as it always has.
The function of clothing is to clothe the wearer, not inform the wearer. We dont drive nails with socket wrenches, we use hammers. Sorry gang, but I just dont see how this will ever be anything more than a passing curiosity..At the risk of making a grand visionary Bill Gates "no one will ever need more than 640K" speech, i'd call the development of wearable computers a novelty at best.
My $0.02
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Aint-it-Cool for wearables ?
I know just what you mean about the HTML. This whole geek-chic schtick, and the blaring HTML headlines, does nothing for having the project taken seriously by those with a functionaly dress sense. They make Kevin Warwick look restrained by comparison.
...and that "Bunuel does Clockwork Orange" image is just gross.
As I've not seen this link posted yet, take a look at Delft University of Technology and their UbiCom project. Very high bandwidth, high on-board processing power, and some neat usage of vision to do accurate position finding. It's an Augmented Reality system, so that instead of just catching data, or displaying it, it's able to accurately overlay real-world imagery with a projected virtual overlay. Their video of playing Pacman inside an empty room, with an entirely virtual maze and ghosts is wonderful.
They've also developed the LART, a chipset for embedded Linux that sadly sounds funnier than it really is. Maybe it's funnier if you read the BOFH.
Of course, he could just be covering his ass, but have you ever seen an actual source of the quote?
What is this obsesion with replicating a PC to a T, but making it portable? The PC was not designed for being hauled around. It's hard drives are fragile, it's monitors either too big or too expensive, and the keyboard and mouse are not a free floating interface. So what have these engineers done? They have adapted an existing design. This is where they go wrong.
I propose an alternate style. If computers are truly going to be used for information purposes, a visual interface will not be needed. Instead, development of speech recognition and speech production engines should be concentrated on. Microphones and speakers are commonly shrunk to incredibly small sizes. So wouldn't an accurate voice synthesizer, one that doesn't sound like a whino with vomit stuck in his throat, provide the interface nessecary for information exchange? The only obstructionsI can see, is the development of an operating system that synchronizes the GUI and CLI, and can portray the content accurately to the user. The only problem is the lack of an intelligent interface.
It would be required that the device become easy to use by the common man, it would be required that the device not be noticable, and it would be required that the device be accurate.
Short of getting Jane from the Ender series, though, will we see this? I would hope so. My dream is to see a country wired for a system of wireless computing. Rather than have one computer for each person, have one cluster for all persons. Tap into the system anywhere it is available, and you should have the same data access.
Let it be known, that this will be the future. In cities such as Arcosanti, this kind of technology will be easy to implement from the start. There is no reason that we should not begin to seek an organic computing experience. An integrated, and seamless experience. Let us do it! Let ours be the Alpha of remote computing, not the Omega!
Pax Digitalia
Regarding the future of wearables, there are a few things from the past that could be noteworthy. The only highly successful wearables to date are personal music players. The transistor radio was portable rather than wearable. I think the first wearable was probably the walkman - the key difference being the private soundspace it created.
:-).
I may have my history muddled here - I imagine that a radio + headphones combination predated the walkman, but I'm under the impression that it took the twin development of earphones and a small unit before it all took off.
So how do people wear these wearables? Typically, the actual unit is stashed out of sight somewhere (in a pocket or bag), while headphones - despite apparently superior sound quality, usually take a back seat to the more discrete earphones.
Why is the unit usually stashed out of sight? I do it for a few reasons: it is more comfortable than clipped on the belt jiggling about, it's more secure (it won't fall off the belt and dash itself into a thousand high-tech pieces), it's padded (only really important with a shock-sensitive device such as CD), it's not going to get in the way, restrict your movement, it's not going to advertise that you feel an insecure need to advertise your toys, and it's not going to slap a big ugly box onto your profile (though the box itself might well be quite pretty).
A lot of these things are going to apply to new types of wearables as well as old.
Have you noticed that most earphones these days seem designed to look a little bit like earrings or jewellery? (eg a curved gold band standing out on the visible part of the earphone). I'm curious about that - they don't seem to incur the fear of appearing effete that is often still precludes guys getting twin earrings, yet it does seem that the tech is trying to incorporate elements of this jewellery, and doing well as a result (once apon a time, all earphone were just black, which perhaps red and blue tags to identify left and right - not merely functional, but functional at the _expense_ of form!).
One of the more recently popular features are remotes on the earphone wires. (These have been around for years, but until the advent of CD players, were fairly rare due it being so much cheaper to have tape-reading mechanisms that required physical force to engage, via the play button). Some people don't use them, some people do, but they are testament to people choosing to sacrifice control of the unit (by stashing it away) rather than wear it on the outside where they can reach it. Unlike the full unit, remotes are more conveniently placed, and much smaller, thus many people prefer them. (Though I actually wear mine out of sight under my shirt collar
Now, what is your opinion of people who wear cop-style underarm cell-phone holsters? I'm guessing you probably snicker behind their backs and hope like hell you'll never be reduced to such transparent (and failing) attempts at appearing important without appearing like you're trying to look important. There will always be people who buy underarm cell-phone holsters, but they're not where we want wearables to end up.
Recently, there was a discussion on brand marks on clothes, shoes etc. Several perceptive people pointed out that (in a gross simplification), there are two streams of wealth - those who can't afford many luxuries, so when they buy them, they buy blatant things that advertise that scream "look at me - I buy expensive things!" (eg a t-shirt with NIKE emblazoned on it), and the second stream of people who have sufficient wealth to almost have style custom-made for them - tailored clothes without logos but with fantastic fit and form, and so on. I think that thinking about this take on consumption in the context of wearables can result in some interesting insights into the future of the tech.
The technology exists to make these things actually wearable, yet the "I'm such a StarTrek weenie I get off on the borg image" still seems the predominant aesthetic. We have www.charmed.com with their equally dubious "cyberchicks with boxes and wires sticking out in all the wrong places that aren't actually very useful for anything, but will really reel in those trekkies with the high-paying jobs" look.
:-) For me, that means extremely discrete is the top priority, with it's aesthetic design acting as a stylistic fallback measure. :-)
Really, wearables that lack style of any substance (or a practical use for that matter) and presumably are intended to sell on wank factor (for whom?) alone are not going tempt very many people. Sure, they mostly just prototypes, but almost universally ignoring important considerations when prototyping is not going to help very much.
On the other hand, if you can browse the web on what could pass on the street for expensive sunglasses - and you can use them as normal sunglasses when not browsing (ie don't need to change headgear whenever you change tasks) then we're starting to get somewhere. And this kind of subtle, miniature heads up system has been built. But it seems the "plaster-junk-to-my-face" look is all the rage with a significant portion of the people involved (there of course some notable exceptions).
Rather than developing better ways to mount a wireless webcam on your head (the last place I'm putting a webcam is on my face! Shoulder, possibly, but face?!?), pour the effort into developing things to wearables more useful as a technology, eg a miniature retina or focus tracking system to incorporate into heads-up sunglasses, thus removing the need for a mouse or control panel larger than one or two buttons. Simply look at the icon and click the button, or whatever.
These systems might be complex and difficult with today's tech - much easier to play with things like webcams, but they offer a hell of a lot more as well.
BTW, I'm not merely spouting here from a position of complete ignorance - I'm working on some miniaturised wearable stuff, but it's in a different direction, and the ultimate goal is stuff that I can actually wear yet still feel stylish
(Ie I'm only spouting from a position of mostly-ignorance
Simple test for wearables: Would you be caught dead wearing that getup in a public place where you might meet people who would recognise you? I have yet to see any wearables that satisfy this extremely basic criteria. You might think this is kinda vain, but we're talking about wearable computers here - they are going to have to attain the same stylistic standards as clothing, sunglasses, shoes etc.
Cell phones had to come a long way before being accepted, and they were greatly aided by the perception that only important people had a genuine need for them. With WAP phones already here, wearable are unlikely to enjoy such a boost.
Alright, it's about time this got posted. I just spent the past year working with Professor Mann and the 'cyborg' group at the University Of Toronto. So, I guess I'll put my $0.02 in
First off, the page is over a year out of date, even the course syllabus is slightly dated. Since Steve Mann came to UofT, the wearcomp/wearcam/eyetap/cybernetics group has grown tremendously. We've effectively taken over an entire graduate student lab with prototypes, workstations, even a Beowulf or two.
Secondly, by no means was "a bunch of engineering students assigned to create wearable computers". Every student involved with the wearcomp group has their own specific interests in the project. Some concentrate on the use of the device, others develop the technology, most of us have hacked the code (all open-source, all linux) to some degree. I personally did my 4th year thesis (along with two partners) on parallel image processing using code designed for wearcomps and eyetap (and running on that aforementioned Beowulf). I also took Professor Mann's course, which, if nothing else, is an eye-opener to what his concepts really are and where he's heading with this technology
For those of you with concerns about the wearability of the devices. Currently, the most widely-used wearcomps can be fairly discretely worn around the waist. However, the eyetaps used are slightly more conspicuous, being mounted on hard hats, baseball caps, etc, with a modified webcam, a small screen, and a fairly large mirror used as a diverter. There are more discrete versions of the eyetap in existence, which are often used by Professor Mann (in fact, he's rarely seen without them), embedded into a larger pair of sunglasses (slightly more stylish than the ones seen on the webpage) or regular lenses.
Where is all this going? Beats me. Bear in mind that when Steve Mann started building wearable computers, he wore 200lbs of equipment in a backpack and had an antenna sticking out his head. In the 20 years that have elapsed since then, the whole system weighs in at about 10lbs in its case, and it's getting smaller all the time. As for uses, of course the first application that comes to mind is internet usage. But after 20 years, Professor Mann's gotten a little bored with just checking e-mail. The concept of a "mediated reality" is the predominant use envisioned for the eyetap. Imagine a meeting around a table in your local Second Cup (or Starbucks for all the non-Canucks out there), where each person is wearing a covert wearcomp. The entire meeting can take place without anyone else in the room able to access the information being shared. You could project flow charts, xterms as whiteboards, etc, to each other using the wearcomps, and nobody but you would know. You could be walking down the street, and another user could have left you a message 'written' on a store window reminding you to bring donuts to the morning meeting. These are the types of uses that could develop, where reality isn't interrupted by the computer (unlike cell phones, pagers, PDAs, etc.), but enhanced, and augmented.
Anyway, I can think of at least 5 other people who will be starting their posts with "I've worked with Professor Steve Mann for x years...", I'll let them do the rest of the talking.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
I've heard Steve Mann talk about the phrases he's coined: Eyetap, wearcomp, photoquantigraphic lightspace rendering, etc. But NEVER has he claimed to have coined the word cyborg. Are you sure that the writeup you've linked to (for TedCity, a media and technology convention-thingy in Toronto) wasn't written by someone else? Professor Mann will unabashadly refer one to any reference he has used, or any other pioneer whose ideas or work he has incorporated into his own.
Further, as to the reaction you've posted, at the time, Mann was in the midst of a project where we wore his wearcomp CONSTANTLY for a year of his life, recording and broadcasting everything. When the year was up, he stopped. Trust me, when I was in his class, I was hoping he'd be broadcasting himself writing the final exam :). Since then, he hasn't been walking around with a bright light shining in everyone's face, oblivious to the world... he's stopped using the light.
It sounds like you hold a personal grudge against Mann, have you ever met him? Or are you just basing this attack on second-hand information from disgruntled MIT students? Regardless, this isn't a topic about Steve Mann, but about his wearable computers.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.