CMU Wearable
Computers and Pervasive
Computing
Asim Smailagic
Institute for Complex Engineered Systems
Carnegie Mellon
June 28, 2001
Approach
• The three labs have collaborated in design and
prototyping of more than 20 generations of
wearable computers
• Design and prototyping of complex systems
require one interdisciplinary approach and
multi-technology capabilities
• Rapid prototyping, concurrent design
methodology has been applied and refined.
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Complexity
• The complexity of the prototype architects
has increased by over two orders of
magnitude, the total design effort has
increased less than a factor of two.
• Over five generations of wearable
computers for speech recognition and
translation, yielding 4.5 orders of
magnitude improvement in performance.
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1991 – 2001
Ten Years of Wearable Computing at Carnegie Mellon
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Wearable and Handheld Computers
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Production vest will go under “Float Coat”
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Electronics Architecture
Palm/PDA
Touch Screen
Jog Dial/
Mouse Wheel
Finger Print
Recognition
Digital
Camera
VGA Display
PDA Cradle
BlueTooth,
WaveLan
USB Controller
Wireless
Adapter
Firewire
Controller
Computer
Serial
Controller
Radio Card
VGA Controller
Temperature
Sensor
CDPD
Modem
GPS Receiver
Vehicle’s ECU
- RPM, MPH, etc
Microphone
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Sound Card
Speakers
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Applications
A number of previously untried application areas
introduced.
-Maintenance, Inspection
-Repair, Troubleshooting
-Augmented Manufacturing
-Plant Operations
-Real-time Speech Translation
-Navigation
-Context-Aware Computing
-Collaboration
-Ubiquitous Computing
-Telematics
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Context Aware Computing
• Knowledge of the user’s context
– Location
– Orientation
– Audio samples from the user environment
– Static data
• Context sensitive help
– Proactive smarter assistant offering useful
information (whispering in your ear)
• Multiple sensors can be used to infer user’s intent
– Wireless Card, Digital Compass, Thermometer, Camera
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PhD Features and
Interaction
User’s List:
• Items can be added,
moved, and removed
• Only “checked” items
appear on the map
Description:
• Information on the
currently selected item
• Dynamic information
automatically updated
Map:
• Dynamic information
automatically updated
Map Controls: Zoom & Pan
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Virtual Whiteboard
Supports Design Meetings
• Menu Commands
– Session management
– Geometric tools
– Expandable plug-ins
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Virtual Whiteboard
Architecture Overview
Service broadcasts
received coordinates
to all clients via
CMU’s Wireless
Andrew
Clients draw
received
coordinates
on screen; all
clients are
synchronized
Client sends a
user’s drawing
to the service
as a series of
coordinates
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Clients
The clients have included:
-NSF, DARPA, ONR
-Boeing
-Adtranz
-U.S. Air Force
-U.S. Marine Corps
-Lockheed-Martin
-IBM
-Chevron
-General Motors
-Daimler-Benz
-Compaq
-Shell
-AT&T
-Intel
-General Dynamics
Electric Boat
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Collaborative Help
The labs have supported additional activities on
campus
• Electronic design in robotics projects
• Use of fabrication machines
• Interaction Design Studio helped other projects
• Multi-departmental projects
Formalize, advertise and open all these capabilities to other
projects in ICES and CIT.
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Awards
Three prestigious international design awards
have been received:
• VuMan 3
• MoCCA
• Digital Ink
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Visionary Research Projects
•
•
•
•
Aura: Pervasive Invisible Computing
Handy Andy Ubiquitous Computing
Context-Aware Computing
Augmented Reality
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Goals
• Provide expertise in interdisciplinary design, rapid
prototyping and user evaluation
• Promote more interdisciplinary design projects
• Provide methodology, measurements, and tools to
support and teach these methods and to support
design meetings
• Provide a physical space and equipment to support
design and fabrication
• Study interdisciplinary design through practicing it
• Develop a metric to compare the prototypes and show a
performance increase by several orders of magnitude.
• Educational support
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Research Directions
• Pervasive Computing
– Invisibilty, Minimizing User Distraction
– User / Virtual Information Space Interaction
– Enhance Human Capabilities
• Context Aware Computing
• Visionary Interaction Design
• Rapid Prototyping of Artifacts Involving
Multidisciplinary, Multi-technology
Approach
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Research Directions
• Near Zero Energy / Weight / Volume
Wearable Computers
• Quick Evaluation Methodology
• New Areas and Applications
–
–
–
–
New Technologies
New Modalities of Interaction
Help for Elderly
Medical Applications
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