Wear Your Computer on Your Shirt Sleeve

13 October 2007

Boston: From clothes riddled with sensors to name tags that detect our moods, computing's next wave could unleash small devices that increasingly augment everyday activities with digital intelligence.

That was the predominant vision at a conference on "wearable computing" held last week in Boston, where researchers showed off prototypes and discussed ideas.

Some attendees took computing to its extreme, donning cyborg-like miniaturised displays attached to eyepieces. But most of what was on exhibit seemed much closer to jumping into a mainstream commercial product.

For example, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (known as ETH Zurich) showed off stretchable, threadlike sensors that can be woven into shirts to detect their wearers' posture. People with back pain or injuries could be prompted on a PC or a mobile device to straighten up, pronto.

Stephane Beauregard of Germany's University of Bremen displayed a shoe-borne sensor whose tiny accelerometers perform electronic dead reckoning - providing real-time location tracking in places satellite navigation systems either cannot reach or cannot describe with precision.

Finding a market

For now the sensor has to be held in place by the shoelaces, but Beauregard expects a version that can fit inside a boot heel could be developed within one year. Beauregard's first intended market is firefighters and other emergency responders.

Graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab had black plastic badges around their necks that analyse multiple factors - including motion and speech patterns - to detect the level of engagement two people are exhibiting in a conversation.