Commercial

Philips – No Kidding

Garments use mobile phone and camera technology to help parents pin point their kids’ position, but also fabric antennas, radio tagging and miniature remote cameras to allow children to play exciting games outdoors. Physical characters with identity chips can be attached to the respective garments. The child sees the character that represents another child on his screen and as children move around their characters also move on the screens, allowing them to create their own stories or hide and seek situations.

Pioneer Corporation’s Media Fashion

A US$484,000 project involving an industrial designer, a clothing designer and Pioneer Corp will allow consumers to wear a computer on their sleeve. Naoki Harasawa is a industrial designer, Michie Sone is a fashion designer. The two have pooled their talents to create a range of wearable personal computers embedded in trendy everyday clothes.

HP (Compaq) – Rock n Scroll input method

Rock ‘n’ Scroll is a user input method that lets users gesture to scroll, select, and command a handheld application without resorting to buttons, touchscreens, spoken commands, or other input methods.

HP (Compaq) Western Research Lab

The Itsy Pocket Computer is designed as an open platform to facilitate innovative research projects. The base Itsy hardware provides a flexible interface for adding a custom daughtercard, and Itsy software is based on the Linux OS and standard GNU tools.

Accenture Personal Awareness Assistant

Using a speech recognition engine, two small microphones, an inconspicuous camera and a scrolling audio buffer, the Accenture Personal Awareness Assistant is always on, passively listening to what a user says. What catapults the Assistant past a simple recording device is its ability to respond to particular contexts and situations.

Sony GestureWrist and GesturePad

This Sony project is developing two input devices for wearable computers, called GestureWrist and GesturePad. Both devices allow users to interact with wearable or nearby computers by using gesture-based commands. Both are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, so they can be used under various social contexts.

Disappearing Computer Initiative

The mission of this EU-funded initiative is to see how information technology can be diffused into everyday objects and settings, and to see how this can lead to new ways of supporting and enhancing people’s lives that go above and beyond what is possible with the computer today.

International Fashion Machines – Textile Research

IFM provides private research and consulting in electronic textiles to a variety of clients, industries, and the military. We develop applications, products, consult on materials and manufacturing techniques. IFM works with the latest electronic yarns and a variety of textile processes including embroidery, sewing, weaving and braiding. IFM also has unique experience in the creation of electronic textile connections, both intra-textile and between traditional electronics and textiles.

IBM Wearable PC Prototype

The prototype IBM Wearable PC, a ThinkPad 560X shrunk to the footprint of a PalmPilot, complete with 340 MB of storage and 64 MB of EDO RAM, is powerful enough to run IBM’s ViaVoice speech software and light enough to clip to your belt.

IBM Research – Linux Watch

The Linux Watch is designed to communicate wirelessly with PCs, cell phones and other wireless-enabled devices using Bluetooth. It has a touch panel and a roller wheel as user interfaces. It also has small microphone and speaker in it.

IBM Research – Meta Pad

BM’s Meta Pad is a device about the size of a � inch thick stack of 3-by-5 index cards, and is part of IBM’s research to explore how humans interact with computers and define the technologies needed for future pervasive devices. It has a core that can be plugged into functional modules.

IBM Research, Japan

There are a variety of pervasive devices such as wearable devices, PDAs, auto PCs, and network computers through which we can obtain useful information even when we are away from home and working places. The aim of IBM Japan’s research is to develop a framework and mechanisms for exchanging data through electronic wave and accessing web applications through pervasive devices.

NTT – RedTacton Human Area Networking Technology

RedTacton is a new Human Area Networking technology that uses the surface of the human body as a safe, high speed network transmission path. RedTacton uses the minute electric fieldemitted on the surface of the human body. Communication is possible using any body surface, such as the hands, fingers, arms, feet, face, legs or torso. RedTacton works through shoes and clothing as well.

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