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

While this might be badass...

[Ekhymosis]

I wonder what the health issues might come out of this? Some of the 'wearable' monitors I have read about require a type of constant light flashing directly into the eye at a much closer range than the traditional monitors. I would love to have a very portable computer, but I also value my eyesight, especially since I have slight retinal decay.

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...

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:While this might be badass...

[scottrocket]

Irrelevant. We are the Borg.

Re:While this might be badass...

[billcopc]

There's no technical reason why that wouldn't be possible. You just need the individual devices to have a common data port, link those up to a compositing processor and off you go. If the gadgets don't have data ports, then you hem and haw at the manufacturer until they add one.

There are a lot of "futuristic" things we can do today, people just don't want to pay for them.

Maybe I'll accept it when...

[hyades1]

they find some way to keep people using the interface from viewing pr0n. Especially if any of the gesture-driven controls they're contemplating get implemented.

Gestures, eh?

[lord_nimula]

Can you imagine using Emacs with this?

Re:Gestures, eh?

[evanbd]

Don't people already gesture at Emacs?

Just a | dream?

[coppro]

In my experience, voice recognition is overrated. I'll be impressed when someone develops software that can isolate and identify any single person's voice. Mind you, whoever designs that software will make billions. Imagine the potential uses... *Taps chest twice.* "Computer! Red alert!"

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?

Re:why?

[m2943]

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?

Yes. And US history shows that they are correct: most high tech companies and inventions start out as university research; the private sector merely commercializes it.

Without lots of government funding, there would be no hightech industry.

Read Rainbows End! (Vernor Vinge)

[StCredZero]

If you need a primer on the implications of wearable computing, read Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (who is known for popularizing the Singularity concept.

He's a math & computer science professor, and writes technically savvy sci-fi that wins Hugo awards.

Just one example: give people the ability to invisibly send and read text messages, and you get something that looks just like Mental Telepathy. And this is just the surface! What if those invisible gestures and heads-up display contact lenses also let you Google something almost as fast and effortlessly as you can say the word? And for you nay-sayers, search existed before Google -- why did Google make things so much better? Research existed before the web & web search, why did the web make things so much better? Because if you cross certain thresholds in speed and accessibility, the quantitative difference becomes qualitative! Once searching for something becomes as easy as saying it, the very concept of *knowing* something changes. (Books already take us part way there. I "know" how to build a compiler. But if I couldn't reach for my copy of the "Dragon Book" I'd be awful lost!)

Interesting that airport maintenance is mentioned,

[mathcam]

since wearing technology to an airport has been demonstrated to be a bad idea.

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.

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).