Nanogenerator Provides Continuous Electrical Power
Georgia Tech Announcement
quinta-feira, 24 de maio de 2007
domingo, 20 de maio de 2007
sábado, 19 de maio de 2007
Chris Jordan Photography Arts
Cell Phones, 200760x100"Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.
sexta-feira, 18 de maio de 2007
Wearable Computing 12.1.95
Wearable Computing Bits are as insubstantial as the ether, but they tend to be packaged in hard boxes. Hardware and software must merge into softwear.
By Nicholas Negroponte and Neil Gershenfeld
Message 30:
Date: 12.1.95
From: nicholas@media.mit.eduTo: lr@wiredmag.comSubject
Wearable Computing
The digital road warrior's kit - laptop, cell phone, PDA, and pager - is just capable enough to bother you everywhere without necessarily helping you anywhere. It's absurd that each device is still on such poor speaking terms with the others. We walk around like pack horses saddled with information appliances. We should be in the saddle, not under it.
evolution of softwear
More than 20 years ago, The Architecture Machine Group at MIT built a media room based on the idea that one should be inside a computer rather than in front of it. While that vision foreshadowed today's immersive environments, it did not go far enough and shrink the room to the size of a person.
In the future, the PC will be blown to bits, many of which, naturally, should be kept near you rather than in your home or at your office. But so far, software has not been particularly soft. Though bits are as insubstantial as the ether, they tend to be packaged in hard boxes. For hardware and software to comfortably follow you around, they must merge into softwear. Developing wearable computing requires as much attention to the medium as the message.
fact, the medium becomes the massage.
What single manufactured material are you exposed to the most? The answer is fabric. We wear it, stand on it, sit on it, and sleep in it. Marvelous technology goes into looms, but all we ask fabric to do is protect us from the elements, look pretty, and not wrinkle or shrink. Can't it do more?
Advances in conducting polymers and reversible optical media are pointing toward fabrics that can literally become displays. Amorphous semiconductors can be used to make solar cells to power fabric. Polymer semiconductors are candidates for wearable logic. The result would be the ultimate flexible computer architecture. Perhaps the biggest decision will be whether to buy clothes from Egghead or software from Brooks Brothers.
Fashion accessories will take on new roles, becoming some of the most important Internet access points, conveniently surrounding you in a Person Wide Web. How better to receive audio communications than through an earring, or to send spoken messages than through your lapel? Jewelry that is blind, deaf, and dumb just isn't earning its keep. Let's give cuff links a job that justifies their name.
Footwear is particularly attractive for computing. Your shoes have plenty of unclaimed space, receive an enormous amount of power (from walking) that is currently untapped, and are ideally placed to communicate with your body and the ground. And a shoe bottom makes much more sense than a laptop - to boot up, you put on your boots. When you come home, before you take off your coat, your shoes can talk to the carpet in preparation for delivery of the day's personalized news to your glasses.
The Body bus
A wearable computer will be useless if you have to walk around looking like the back of your desk. Fortunately, bits are more than skin deep. Tom Zimmerman (mailto:tz@media.mit.edu) has shown that the noncontact coupling between your body and weak electric fields can be used to create and sense tiny nano-amp currents in your body. Modulating these signals creates Body Net, a personal-area network that communicates through your skin. Using roughly the same voltage and frequencies as audio transmissions, this will be as safe as wearing a pair of headphones. Keeping data in your body avoids the intrusion of wires, the need for an optical path for infrared, and conventional problems such as regulation and eavesdropping.
Your shoe computer can talk to a wrist display and keyboard and heads-up glasses. Activating your body means that everything you touch is potentially digital. A handshake becomes an exchange of digital business cards, a friendly arm on the shoulder provides helpful data, touching a doorknob verifies your identity, and picking up a phone downloads your numbers and voice signature for faithful speech recognition.
This article was co-authored by Neil Gershenfeld (gersh@media.mit.edu), a MIT professor and one of three co-principal investigators of the Media Lab's newest research consortium, Things That Think.
By Nicholas Negroponte and Neil Gershenfeld
Message 30:
Date: 12.1.95
From: nicholas@media.mit.eduTo: lr@wiredmag.comSubject
Wearable Computing
The digital road warrior's kit - laptop, cell phone, PDA, and pager - is just capable enough to bother you everywhere without necessarily helping you anywhere. It's absurd that each device is still on such poor speaking terms with the others. We walk around like pack horses saddled with information appliances. We should be in the saddle, not under it.
evolution of softwear
More than 20 years ago, The Architecture Machine Group at MIT built a media room based on the idea that one should be inside a computer rather than in front of it. While that vision foreshadowed today's immersive environments, it did not go far enough and shrink the room to the size of a person.
In the future, the PC will be blown to bits, many of which, naturally, should be kept near you rather than in your home or at your office. But so far, software has not been particularly soft. Though bits are as insubstantial as the ether, they tend to be packaged in hard boxes. For hardware and software to comfortably follow you around, they must merge into softwear. Developing wearable computing requires as much attention to the medium as the message.
fact, the medium becomes the massage.
What single manufactured material are you exposed to the most? The answer is fabric. We wear it, stand on it, sit on it, and sleep in it. Marvelous technology goes into looms, but all we ask fabric to do is protect us from the elements, look pretty, and not wrinkle or shrink. Can't it do more?
Advances in conducting polymers and reversible optical media are pointing toward fabrics that can literally become displays. Amorphous semiconductors can be used to make solar cells to power fabric. Polymer semiconductors are candidates for wearable logic. The result would be the ultimate flexible computer architecture. Perhaps the biggest decision will be whether to buy clothes from Egghead or software from Brooks Brothers.
Fashion accessories will take on new roles, becoming some of the most important Internet access points, conveniently surrounding you in a Person Wide Web. How better to receive audio communications than through an earring, or to send spoken messages than through your lapel? Jewelry that is blind, deaf, and dumb just isn't earning its keep. Let's give cuff links a job that justifies their name.
Footwear is particularly attractive for computing. Your shoes have plenty of unclaimed space, receive an enormous amount of power (from walking) that is currently untapped, and are ideally placed to communicate with your body and the ground. And a shoe bottom makes much more sense than a laptop - to boot up, you put on your boots. When you come home, before you take off your coat, your shoes can talk to the carpet in preparation for delivery of the day's personalized news to your glasses.
The Body bus
A wearable computer will be useless if you have to walk around looking like the back of your desk. Fortunately, bits are more than skin deep. Tom Zimmerman (mailto:tz@media.mit.edu) has shown that the noncontact coupling between your body and weak electric fields can be used to create and sense tiny nano-amp currents in your body. Modulating these signals creates Body Net, a personal-area network that communicates through your skin. Using roughly the same voltage and frequencies as audio transmissions, this will be as safe as wearing a pair of headphones. Keeping data in your body avoids the intrusion of wires, the need for an optical path for infrared, and conventional problems such as regulation and eavesdropping.
Your shoe computer can talk to a wrist display and keyboard and heads-up glasses. Activating your body means that everything you touch is potentially digital. A handshake becomes an exchange of digital business cards, a friendly arm on the shoulder provides helpful data, touching a doorknob verifies your identity, and picking up a phone downloads your numbers and voice signature for faithful speech recognition.
This article was co-authored by Neil Gershenfeld (gersh@media.mit.edu), a MIT professor and one of three co-principal investigators of the Media Lab's newest research consortium, Things That Think.
Condominimun
Wired 15.05: Condominimum - Welcome to the Micro Compact Home
See related story: Condominimum
04.24.07
See related story: Condominimum
04.24.07
The Apple Inc. A1203 GSM Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth and Wifi, FCC ID: BCGA1203
"The Apple Inc. A1203 GSM Cellular Telephone with Bluetooth and Wifi, FCC ID: BCGA1203, is in compliance with the limits for general population uncontrolled exposure specified in FCC 2.1093. The device was tested according to the measurement standards and procedures specified in FCC OET Bulletin 65, Supplement C (Edition 01-01) and IEEE p1528/D1.2, April 21, 2003."
These Boots Were Made for Navigatin'
These Boots Were Made for Navigatin'
Now that GPS units have made driving completely foolproof, its on to the next frontier: walking. German designer Martin Frey has developed a piar of shoes that include a route-finding system.
The description of the technology is a bit thin, but it seems like you'll use a smartphone, PDA or something similar to enter your destination into a map service and get a route. The device will then send signals via Bluetooth to your shoes, telling them where you are in relation to the calculated path. If you stray from the chosen route, the soles tilt right or left to signal which way to veer.
Let's hope the shoes never tell anyone to stand on a busy train track.
Follow your feet [New Scientist]
Posted by David Becker 2:04:35 PM
Wired - Ultra Mobile PCs
Ultra Mobile PCs Still Struggle With Performance, Relevance
Rob Beschizza 05.17.07 2:00 AM
Rob Beschizza 05.17.07 2:00 AM
A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
See related story: A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
06.07.06 2:00 AM
A close-up shows the discolored, raised area caused by the sheath failure of Quinn Norton's implant.
magnets
See related story: A Sixth Sense for a Wired World
06.07.06 2:00 AM
A close-up shows the discolored, raised area caused by the sheath failure of Quinn Norton's implant.
magnets
THE COMING AGE OF CALM TECHNOLOGY 1996
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/acmfuture2endnote.htm
THE COMING AGE OF CALM TECHNOLOGY[1]
Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown
Xerox PARC
October 5, 1996
THE COMING AGE OF CALM TECHNOLOGY[1]
Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown
Xerox PARC
October 5, 1996
quinta-feira, 17 de maio de 2007
Ubiquitous Computing
http://sandbox.xerox.com/ubicomp/
Ubiquitous Computing
Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.
Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.
Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology" .
What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't
Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.
Early work in Ubiquitous Computing
The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):
Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.
Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:
Ubiquitous Computing #1
Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.
Ubiquitous Computing #2
For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.
Slides
In March 1996 Weiser spoke at the Nomadic '96 conference. Here are the slides.
You can access the postscript for Weiser's 35mm color slides for the keynote talk entitled "Building Invisible Interfaces" given at the User Interface, Systems, and Technologies (UIST) conference, November, 1994.
Dr. Doug Terry gave a talk at Stanford University on systems problems of mobile computing. Here are his slides.
Slides from the invited talk by Weiser: "Does Ubiquitous Computing Need Interface Agents? No." given at Mit Media Lab Symposium on User Interface Agents, October 1992.
Cartoons
Virtual Reality vs. Ubiquitous Computing, in cartoons.
Phenomenological post-modernism explained and related to computer science, in cartoons.
Papers
Other writeups by Weiser on different aspects of Ubicomp can be found in the following references:
Mark Weiser. "The world is not a desktop". Interactions; January 1994; pp. 7-8.
Mark Weiser, "Hot Topics: Ubiquitous Computing" IEEE Computer, October 1993.
Mark Weiser, "Some Computer Science Problems in Ubiquitous Computing," Communications of the ACM, July 1993. (reprinted as "Ubiquitous Computing". Nikkei Electronics; December 6, 1993; pp. 137-143.)
Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, pp. 94-10, September 1991
Press
There have been popular press articles about ubicomp. Some of the recent ones are cited below:
"The Chips Are Coming". Smithsonian Magazine, September 1994.
"Hot Chips". Australian ABC TV. (Includes Mark and daughter Corinne using computer at home.) May 17, 1994.
"The power to invent the future." London Financial Times, March 24, 1994. (3 pp.)
"PARC is back". WIRED; February 1994; pp. 91-95.
"Xerox PARC". Nikkei Electronics; November 22, 1993; pp. 115-124.
Other
Here are some other press references. (Weiser's CV has still more press and paper references.)
There are some quicktime movies of some of the ubiquitous computing devices.
Ubiquitous computing work at PARC was funded by Xerox and ARPA; funding does not mean endorsement.
Ubiquitous Computing
Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing.
Mark Weiser is the father of ubiquitous computing; his web page contains links to many papers on the topic.
Two recent papers express elements of the ubiquitous computing philosophy: "Open House" (also in a MS Word version) , and "Designing Calm Technology" .
What Ubiquitous Computing Isn't
Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences.
Early work in Ubiquitous Computing
The initial incarnation of ubiquitous computing was in the form of "tabs", "pads", and "boards" built at Xerox PARC, 1988-1994. Several papers describe this work, and there are web pages for the Tabs and for the Boards (which are a commercial product now):
Ubicomp helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing research, although it is not the same thing as mobile computing, nor a superset nor a subset.
Ubiquitous Computing has roots in many aspects of computing. In its current form, it was first articulated by Mark Weiser in 1988 at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC. He describes it like this:
Ubiquitous Computing #1
Inspired by the social scientists, philosophers, and anthropologists at PARC, we have been trying to take a radical look at what computing and networking ought to be like. We believe that people live through their practices and tacit knowledge so that the most powerful things are those that are effectively invisible in use. This is a challenge that affects all of computer science. Our preliminary approach: Activate the world. Provide hundreds of wireless computing devices per person per office, of all scales (from 1" displays to wall sized). This has required new work in operating systems, user interfaces, networks, wireless, displays, and many other areas. We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.
Ubiquitous Computing #2
For thirty years most interface design, and most computer design, has been headed down the path of the "dramatic" machine. Its highest ideal is to make a computer so exciting, so wonderful, so interesting, that we never want to be without it. A less-traveled path I call the "invisible"; its highest ideal is to make a computer so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it. (I have also called this notion "Ubiquitous Computing", and have placed its origins in post-modernism.) I believe that in the next twenty years the second path will come to dominate. But this will not be easy; very little of our current systems infrastructure will survive. We have been building versions of the infrastructure-to-come at PARC for the past four years, in the form of inch-, foot-, and yard-sized computers we call Tabs, Pads, and Boards. Our prototypes have sometimes succeeded, but more often failed to be invisible. From what we have learned, we are now explorting some new directions for ubicomp, including the famous "dangling string" display.
Slides
In March 1996 Weiser spoke at the Nomadic '96 conference. Here are the slides.
You can access the postscript for Weiser's 35mm color slides for the keynote talk entitled "Building Invisible Interfaces" given at the User Interface, Systems, and Technologies (UIST) conference, November, 1994.
Dr. Doug Terry gave a talk at Stanford University on systems problems of mobile computing. Here are his slides.
Slides from the invited talk by Weiser: "Does Ubiquitous Computing Need Interface Agents? No." given at Mit Media Lab Symposium on User Interface Agents, October 1992.
Cartoons
Virtual Reality vs. Ubiquitous Computing, in cartoons.
Phenomenological post-modernism explained and related to computer science, in cartoons.
Papers
Other writeups by Weiser on different aspects of Ubicomp can be found in the following references:
Mark Weiser. "The world is not a desktop". Interactions; January 1994; pp. 7-8.
Mark Weiser, "Hot Topics: Ubiquitous Computing" IEEE Computer, October 1993.
Mark Weiser, "Some Computer Science Problems in Ubiquitous Computing," Communications of the ACM, July 1993. (reprinted as "Ubiquitous Computing". Nikkei Electronics; December 6, 1993; pp. 137-143.)
Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, pp. 94-10, September 1991
Press
There have been popular press articles about ubicomp. Some of the recent ones are cited below:
"The Chips Are Coming". Smithsonian Magazine, September 1994.
"Hot Chips". Australian ABC TV. (Includes Mark and daughter Corinne using computer at home.) May 17, 1994.
"The power to invent the future." London Financial Times, March 24, 1994. (3 pp.)
"PARC is back". WIRED; February 1994; pp. 91-95.
"Xerox PARC". Nikkei Electronics; November 22, 1993; pp. 115-124.
Other
Here are some other press references. (Weiser's CV has still more press and paper references.)
There are some quicktime movies of some of the ubiquitous computing devices.
Ubiquitous computing work at PARC was funded by Xerox and ARPA; funding does not mean endorsement.
Helmet Mounted Displays for Soldier Applications
Helmet Mounted Displays for Soldier Applications
Rockwell Collins has produced a new high resolution head mounted SVGA display that is both compact and versatile. It is lightweight and extremely rugged with low power consumption.
The ProView™ S035 monocular Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) accepts a variety of analog video inputs and is selectable by RS-232 control or auto detection. The display is equipped with an auto-shutdown when in the stow position.
The Proview S035 monocular HMD may be procured as either the complete system (display Module with analog Display Controller) or as the stand-alone Display Module itself.
VivoMetrics - LifeShirt System
VivoMetrics - LifeShirt System
The LifeShirt System is the first non-invasive, continuous ambulatory monitoring system that can collect data on pulmonary, cardiac, and other physiologic data, and correlate them over time. The LifeShirt System gathers data during the subject's daily routine, providing pharmaceutical and academic researchers a continuous "movie" of the subject's health in real-life situations (work, school, exercise, sleep).
The LifeShirt System is the first non-invasive, continuous ambulatory monitoring system that can collect data on pulmonary, cardiac, and other physiologic data, and correlate them over time. The LifeShirt System gathers data during the subject's daily routine, providing pharmaceutical and academic researchers a continuous "movie" of the subject's health in real-life situations (work, school, exercise, sleep).
Brystol CyberJacket
Bristol CyberJacket
The Bristol Wearable Computing Project's CyberJacket, designed in collaboration with Annie Lovejoy, was shown at ISWC 2002 demonstrating soundscapes constructed using the user's position and orientation - see "A Walk in the Wireless Woods" - as well at the SIGGRAPH04 CyberFashion Show.
The Bristol Wearable Computing Project's CyberJacket, designed in collaboration with Annie Lovejoy, was shown at ISWC 2002 demonstrating soundscapes constructed using the user's position and orientation - see "A Walk in the Wireless Woods" - as well at the SIGGRAPH04 CyberFashion Show.
Computational couture 2006
The sigtronic collection of runway fashion
featuring works by students of mit, risd, parsons, nyu
+ fresh designers from boston, new york, seattle, and cleveland
feb 1, 2006 :: 7:00pm
get your tix online treats + beats + meets
museum of sciencescience parkboston, ma 02114
map + directions
featuring works by students of mit, risd, parsons, nyu
+ fresh designers from boston, new york, seattle, and cleveland
feb 1, 2006 :: 7:00pm
get your tix online treats + beats + meets
museum of sciencescience parkboston, ma 02114
map + directions
Emotion detectors
Zypad WL 1000
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/index.php?p=272
http://www.arcom.com/wearable_computer/Zypad/default.htm?gclid=CLu20bm4lowCFQ5HVAodFEx57Q
products/ProductPage.aspx?ProductID=117
- According to LinuxDevices.com, the Zypad WL 1000, a new wrist-worn PC has been demonstrated to the military forces. This device, which can run Linux or Windows CE, is a hands-free computer which handles wireless networking and GPS tracking. It also comes with a 240 x 320 pixels touchscreen and has a battery which can last about 8 hours. It only weighs 300 grams — but it will be attached at the end of your arm, so it might feel heavier than this. It should be available in July for about $2,500 and could be used by healthcare or law enforcement personnel. But read more…
Nike and iPod
iPod-compatible footwear that tracks runners' training routines is just the beginning of a collaboration between these iconic brands. [...] Their first jointly produced product: the Nike+iPod Sport kit, which involves an electronic sensor inserted under the inner sole of a new Nike running shoe dubbed the Moire (pronounce (MOR-ay). That sensor talks to a small wireless receiver that attaches to Apple's iPod nano music player. The components work together to give voice prompts, interjected while music is playing, that tell runners how far they've gone and at what pace. The iPod will also keep track of the duration, distance, and other information on each run. The data could then be uploaded to a Mac or PC, and from there to a Nike Web site called Nikeplus.com, where users can track progress, set goals, and share results. The shoes will sell for about $100. The sensor and iPod attachment will go for about $29...
The moving finger
The University of Buffalo’s VR lab has developed a cap for your index finger that is exquisitely sensitive to movement–to the point that it can actually be used as a 3D digitizer. It has an accelerometer, a force sensor, and a motion tracker, and its developers believe it’ll hit the market in three years, which is admirably conservative–usually researchers predict (and it’s always hubris) that they’re only one year away from their first Ferrari.
So what?
First, I want no lame jokes about communicating with the computer using your center digit. With that out of the way: This device is exciting mostly because of cell phones, which currently have at least two disadvantages in the UI department.
First, their keyboards are tiny. Second, in most cases, you have to unholster them in order to use them. Of all the frustrating, clumsy things to do! What we’ve always needed is an input mechanism that leaves our hands free, and this cap is pretty close. It’s not too hard to imagine a standard gesture language (think of handwriting recognition systems) that would give you access to a wide variety of smartphone functions. Output would come to your headset (I’m happy to observe that many Bluetooth headsets are being worn even when their owners aren’t on the phone. I regard this as creeping wearable-ism and a Good Thing.) If you wanted more input bandwidth, you could put caps on several fingers and communicate using some variation of American Sign Language (Thad Starner at Georgia Tech has shown that this is feasible. Perhaps you’d make an old-fashioned rotary dialing gesture to enter numbers; if the virtual dial were big enough, your precision wouldn’t have to be very high. (Of course, you’ll look ridiculous standing on a street corner making broad, circular arm gestures for no apparent reason, but you are an early adopter: You know that all progress extracts a price.) All in all, potentially pretty cool. I hope it turns into something.
So what?
First, I want no lame jokes about communicating with the computer using your center digit. With that out of the way: This device is exciting mostly because of cell phones, which currently have at least two disadvantages in the UI department.
First, their keyboards are tiny. Second, in most cases, you have to unholster them in order to use them. Of all the frustrating, clumsy things to do! What we’ve always needed is an input mechanism that leaves our hands free, and this cap is pretty close. It’s not too hard to imagine a standard gesture language (think of handwriting recognition systems) that would give you access to a wide variety of smartphone functions. Output would come to your headset (I’m happy to observe that many Bluetooth headsets are being worn even when their owners aren’t on the phone. I regard this as creeping wearable-ism and a Good Thing.) If you wanted more input bandwidth, you could put caps on several fingers and communicate using some variation of American Sign Language (Thad Starner at Georgia Tech has shown that this is feasible. Perhaps you’d make an old-fashioned rotary dialing gesture to enter numbers; if the virtual dial were big enough, your precision wouldn’t have to be very high. (Of course, you’ll look ridiculous standing on a street corner making broad, circular arm gestures for no apparent reason, but you are an early adopter: You know that all progress extracts a price.) All in all, potentially pretty cool. I hope it turns into something.
Hussein Chalayan
Monofilament cables are held in hollow tubes that will be sewn into the garment.
The wires within the tubes connect to motors at the bottom of the dress. The motors reel in wires attached to the outer layer of the garment, altering its shape.
A close-up of one dress’s "bum pad." The finished bum pad contains the motors (shown) used to transform the dress, as well as the batteries and circuitry required to control the motors. Straps along the shoulder move when wires are pulled to alter the style of the sleeves.
The mechanical underpinning of a transforming skirt. Pulling on the wires within the yellow tubes causes the garment to change shape, creating a bustle.
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