Wearing a Computer at Work

Roland Piquepaille writes "The European Union has funded an ambitious project related to wearable technology. The project, named WearIT@work, will end in one year and invested funds are expected to exceed 23 million euros. The goal is to replace traditional interfaces, such as screen, keyboard or computer unit, by speech control or gesture control without modifying the applications. This wearable system is currently being tested in four different fields including aircraft maintenance, emergency response, car production and healthcare."

Comments

Re:While this might be badass...

[ILuvRamen]

You can't forget the severe damage to your vocal chords if you have to talk to your computer all day. I'd give the average person about a month before they'd have to have surgery on their vocal chords, especially during winter. That's especially because of the way you have to talk, all loud and slow and clear instead of lazy and low energy and slightly slurred so that a computer can understand you. Studies show that damages your vocal chords waaaay more. Then there's the whole motion based thing. If typing and moving a mouse can give you carpal tunnel and tendonitis, just think what waving your arm around or basically any other repeated, detectable movement would cause. Tennis elbow x 10!
Oh and PS, old people work at the hospital where I also do (old = 40+ lol) and they're finally just getting settled using the keyboard and mouse and don't hate them anymore. If you try and tell them to suddenly get retrained on something completely different and still do their job, they'll either not use it or quit. Seriously, we swapped out a noteboook with a tablet and the doctor stopped using it because it had to be held differently. Even in the IT department, I don't think we'd wanna relearn some dumb interface. We can type and mouse as fast as we can think or at least as fast as the computer can react so there's no advantage to switching to a new interface system. When I use a laptop touchpad even the speed at which I can do tasks on the computer drops to about 1/5th. Nothing is more quick and effective as a mouse in my hands.
But I would use a DDR pad as input just for fun when I wasn't in a hurry...that's it though lol

Re:Why do we have to keep doing this?

[hiben]

I work for one of the partners in the wearIT@work-project (not on the project but close) and can tell you that this is not about augmenting cubefarms.
If you take a closer look at the project goals you'll see that there are areas of work where computers (Desktop, PDA, Smartphone,etc.) are more hindering than helpful in their current form because you need your hands to work.
When your work consists of typing at the keyboard and pushing mice then there is no need to wear a computer. If you need your hands for other tasks you need a better (no WIMP) interface.
Holding a tablet-PC is mostly no option either - but it totally depends on the task. Thats why there is a lot of interest in investigating this topic every few years. The devices get smaller and faster.

Re:Why do we have to keep doing this?

[couchslug]

"Why does someone need to investigate this every few years?"

To inflict awkward equipment on innoncent users?

A major drawback of wearable computing is interference with manual tasks along with damage to the wearable equipment.

The aircraft maintenance world (one of their target groups) is under great pressure to have portable data access and easy-to-use test equipment. Networked maintainers can produce the data management want much quicker if they do it on the spot.

A rugged notebook (REALLY rugged) works well enough, and one can put it down when changing a hydraulic pump and getting covered with fluid. Nothing smaller is suitable for viewing maintenance instructions.

Barring miracles, wearable computing gear will get trashed faster than any other maintenance equipment. When bits break off they will present a FOD (Foreign Object Damage) hazard (= more shite to fish out of cockpits).