WEARABLE COMPUTER: SMART CLOTHING
Abstract — Wearable computers are computers that are worn on the body. This type of wearable technology has been used in behavioral modeling, health monitoring systems, and information technologies and media development. Wearable computers are especially useful for applications that require computational support while the user's hands, voice, eyes, arms or attention are actively engaged with the physical environment. They also do not have the situational awareness that they should have: while they are not being explicitly used, they are unable to remain attentive to possible ways to help the user. Environmental technology in the form of ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous surveillance, and smart spaces, has attempted to bring multimedia computing seamlessly into our daily lives, promising a future world with cameras and microphones everywhere, connected to invisible computing, always attentive to our every movement or conversation. This raises some serious privacy issues. Even if we ignore these issues, there is still a problem of user-control, customization, and reliance on an infrastructure that will not become totally ubiquitous. In response to these problems, a personal, wearable, multimedia computer, with head-mounted camera(s)/display, sensors, etc. is proposed for use in day-to-day living within the surrounding social fabric of the individual. Examples of practical uses include: face identification, way-finding via sequences of freeze-frames, shared visual memory/environment maps, and other personal note-taking together with visual images. Anecdotal personal experiences are reported, and privacy issues are addressed, with a discussion of how personal `smart clothing' has counteracted or at least reached a healthy balance with environmental surveillance.
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