Wearable PCs Under Linux

demachina writes "Xybernaut, a maker of wearable PC's featured in Slashdot a couple months ago, has added Linux support. They say Linux "provides a stable platform that works well in a network environment" and it "requires far fewer computer resources than competing operating systems and allows for increased efficiency" " This one has a wrist mounted screen among other things. I'm totally going gargoyle.

Comments

Linux's gonna be big... but not on X86

[Ecyrd]

The main problem with wearable technology is power. It really defeats the purpose of having a computer that sits in your shirt pocket because you need a kilogram worth of batteries to run the thing for a day.

This is the reason why most of wearcomp stuff runs on embedded CPUs, such as the Motorola Dragonball series (as used in Palm) or the ARM chips (as used in Psion and Newton), NOT X86. Xybernaut does great stuff, but so far their systems have been hampered by the fact that they insist on running Windows on their wearables, so they need hefty processing power. Not that there are many companies in the wearable business anyway...

What Linux will offer is the ability to adapt to multiple platforms: you can do your development on your top-of-the-line Athlon system at home, then quite easily port onto your uCsimm system. I personally think that we're going to see a lot of new wearable systems based on light-weight embedded systems and uCLinux.

BTW, for anyone who is interested, go see the International Symposium on Wearable Computing home page (you can download most of the presentations from 98 and 99 as PDF (abstracts) and RealVideo). Another good place (though still heavily under construction) is the Wearable.org page. Did you know, for example, that you can harvest power from your shoes to power a wearable?

We have a couple of these...

[Ribo99]

We have a couple of these in our lab. I haven't actually worked with them but the Intern who did said they were "pieces". He hated wearing them. They just aren't comforable. The keyboard that straps to your arm is useless, the harddrive/cpu runs too hot to wear comforably on your waist, the HMD is crap, extremely uncomfortable. The arm-mounted touchscreen is unreadable in sunny weather. To quote him: "Once you add together the CPU, battery, port expander, headphones, microphone, networking card, and GPS car with antenna, this unit wears on you much more then you wear it."
It was a good idea, but IMO wearables should be much less invasive then that. Give me my Palm Pilot any day. :)

For some commentary on the Xybernaut from Steve Mann's Cyborg crew up in the University of Toronto, look here.