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...

[ozmanjusri]

I would love to have a very portable computer, but I also value my eyesight, especially since I have slight retinal decay.

In a lot of the applications listed, it wouldn't be relevant.

Underground mine rescuers already use equipment like BG4s, gas detectors, leaky feeder radios and more. Being able to combine the current half-dozen displays into a single HUD would be a godsend.

There's nothing like dangling from a belay in pitch darkness with an armfull of gear, and having your SCBA's fault alarm go off, to make you wish the info screen was in front of your eyes instead of securely strapped away on the set's harness...

why?

[rastoboy29]

Why on earth is the EU funding something like this?  Do they really think they'll do a better job sorting this sort of thing out than private industry?

Why do we have to keep doing this?

[sootman]

Why does someone need to investigate this every few years? There's enough noise in the average cubefarm (where walls don't reach the ceiling)--do we really want to have everyone start talking to their computers too? And touchscreens, gestures, etc.--sure, RSI is bad, but keyboards and mice are flat, you can rest your arms a lot, and they work with more or less natural motions. (It's not a coincidence that a computer keyboard is like a piano keyboard but in two dimensions--you hit different rows by curling and uncurling your fingers.)

I used to have a touchscreen monitor and it was fun to touch the screen to scroll and 'click' on web links by literally touching them but holding your arms out in front of you for any period of time is not easy. I had a tablet PC and holding it, even casually while walking around doing inventory with it and a barcode scanner, was a huge PITA. (Ha--"A" could stand for "arm" in this case.) Looking at the tablet-holding guy brought back all the bad memories: all the fun of walking around with a clipboard, but it's five pounds or so instead of a few ounces. Yeah. Super. Sign me up.