This book explains the concept of wearable computing, need for wearable technology, its advantages, application areas, state of art developments in this area, required material and technology, possible future applications including cyborg developments and the need for this sphere of influence in the future. The scope encompasses three major components, wearable computing (next generation of conventional computing, ergonomics), wearable technology (medical support, rehabilitation engineering, assistive technology support devices, army/combat usage) and allied technologies (miniature components, reliability, high performance integration, cyber physical systems, robotics). Aids reader to recognize the need and functional operations of a wearable computing device Includes diversified examples and case studies from different domains Presents a hybrid concept relating medical care and augmented reality Illustrates product level description examples and research ideas for future development Introduces various wearable technologies and other related technologies for enabling wearable computing This book is aimed at senior undergraduate, graduate students and researchers in computer and biomedical engineering, bioinstrumentation, biosensors, and assistive technology.

Annotation This lecture describes application design for wearable computing, providing a blend of experiencebased insights, learning in application development, and guidelines on how to frame problems and address a specifi c design context, followed by more detailed issues and solution approaches at the next level of the application development. The lecture takes the viewpoint of a potential designer or researcher in this fi eld and aims to present such an integrated material in one place. Designing wearable computer interfaces requires attention to many different factors because of the computers closeness to the body and its use while performing other tasks. Among the most challenging questions facing wearable-computer designers are user needs and interactions. For the purposes of discussion, we have created the UCAMP framework, which consists of the following factors: user, corporal, attention, manipulation, and perception. Each of these factors and their importance has been described. A number of example prototypes developed by the authors, as well as the other researchers, have been used to illustrate these concepts. Wearable computers have established their fi rst foothold in several application domains, such as vehicle and aircraft maintenance and manufacturing, inspection procedures, language translation, and other areas. The lecture proceeds by describing the next step in the evolution of wearable computers, namely context awareness. Context-aware computing takes into account a users state and surroundings, and the mobile computer modifi es its behavior based on this information. A users context can be quite rich, consisting of attributes such as physical location, physiological state, personal history, daily behavioral patterns, and so forth. If a human assistant were given such context, he or she would make decisions in a proactive fashion, anticipating user needs, and acting as a proactive assistant. The goal is to enable mobile computers to play an analogous role, exploiting context information to signifi cantly reduce demands on human attention. Context-aware intelligent agents can deliver relevant information when a user needs that information. These data make possible many exciting new applications, such as augmented reality, context-aware collaboration, augmented manufacturing, and maintenance. The combined studies and research reported in this lecture suggest a number of useful guidelines for designing wearable computing devices. Also included with the guidelines is a list of questions that designers should consider when beginning to design a wearable computer. The research directions section emphasizes remaining challenges and trends in the areas of user interface, modalities of interaction, and wearable cognitive augmentation. Finally, we summarize the most important challenges and outline future directions in wearable computing.

This book provides the most up-to-date research and development on wearable computing, wireless body sensor networks, wearable systems integrated with mobile computing, wireless networking and cloud computing This book has a specific focus on advanced methods for programming Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) based on the reference SPINE project. It features an on-line website (http://spine.deis.unical.it) to support readers in developing their own BSN application/systems and covers new emerging topics on BSNs such as collaborative BSNs, BSN design methods, autonomic BSNs, integration of BSNs and pervasive environments, and integration of BSNs with cloud computing. The book provides a description of real BSN prototypes with the possibility to see on-line demos and download the software to test them on specific sensor platforms and includes case studies for more practical applications. • Provides a future roadmap by learning advanced technology and open research issues • Gathers the background knowledge to tackle key problems, for which solutions will enhance the evolution of next-generation wearable systems • References the SPINE web site (http://spine.deis.unical.it) that accompanies the text • Includes SPINE case studies and span topics like human activity recognition, rehabilitation of elbow/knee, handshake detection, emotion recognition systems Wearable Systems and Body Sensor Networks: from modeling to implementation is a great reference for systems architects, practitioners, and product developers. Giancarlo Fortino is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Engineering (since 2006) at the Department of Electronics, Informatics and Systems (DEIS) of the University of Calabria (Unical), Rende (CS), Italy. He was recently nominated Guest Professor in Computer Engineering of Wuhan University of Technology on April, 18 2012 (the term of appointment is three years). His research interests include distributed computing and networks, wireless sensor networks, wireless body sensor networks, agent systems, agent oriented software engineering, streaming content distribution networks, distributed multimedia systems, GRID computing. Raffaele Gravina received the B.Sc. and M.S. degrees both in computer engineering from the University of Calabria, Rende, Italy, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. Here he also received the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering. He's now a Postdoctoral research fellow at University of Calabria. His research interests are focused on high-level programming methods for WSNs, specifically Wireless Body Sensor Networks. He wrote almost 30 scientific/technical articles in the area of the proposed Book. He is co-founder of SenSysCal S.r.l., a spin-off company of the University of Calabria, and CTO of the wearable computing area of the company. Stefano Galzarano received the B.S. and M.S. degrees both in computer engineering from the University of Calabria, Rende, Italy, in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He is currently pursuing a joint Ph.D. degree in computer engineering with University of Calabria and Technical University of Eindhoven (The Netherlands). His research interests are focused on high-level programming methods for wireless sensor networks and, specifically, novel methods and frameworks for autonomic wireless body sensor networks.

Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality presents a broad coverage of the technologies and interface design issues associated with wearable computers and augmented reality displays both rapidly developing fields in computer science, engineering, and human interface design. This book presents concepts related to the use and underlying technologies of augmented reality and wearable computer systems. There are many application areas for this technology, such as medicine, manufacturing, training, and recreation. Wearable computers will allow a much closer association of information with the user than is possible with traditional desktop computers. This book addresses an important aspect of wearable computers and augmented reality, either from the conceptual or from an application framework. Given the wide coverage of topics on issues related to the display of computer-generated images in the environment, this book can be used as a text for computer science, computer engineering, and interface design courses.

Practitioners and scholars explore ethical, social, and conceptual issues arising in relation to such devices as fitness monitors, neural implants, and a toe-controlled computer mouse. Body-centered computing now goes beyond the “wearable” to encompass implants, bionic technology, and ingestible sensors—technologies that point to hybrid bodies and blurred boundaries between human, computer, and artificial intelligence platforms. Such technologies promise to reconfigure the relationship between bodies and their environment, enabling new kinds of physiological interfacing, embodiment, and productivity. Using the term embodied computing to describe these devices, this book offers essays by practitioners and scholars from a variety of disciplines that explore the accompanying ethical, social, and conceptual issues. The contributors examine technologies that range from fitness monitors to neural implants to a toe-controlled mouse. They discuss topics that include the policy implications of ingestibles; the invasive potential of body area networks, which transmit data from bodily devices to the internet; cyborg experiments, linking a human brain directly to a computer; the evolution of the ankle monitor and other intrusive electronic monitoring devices; fashiontech, which offers users an aura of “cool” in exchange for their data; and the “final frontier” of technosupremacism: technologies that seek to read our minds. Taken together, the essays show the importance of considering embodied technologies in their social and political contexts rather than in isolated subjectivity or in purely quantitative terms. Contributors Roba Abbas, Andrew Iliadis, Gary Genosko, Suneel Jethani, Deborah Lupton, Katina Michael, M. G. Michael, Marcel O'Gorman, Maggie Orth, Isabel Pedersen, Christine Perakslis, Kevin Warwick, Elizabeth Wissinger

The confluence of decades of computer science and computer engineering research in multimodal interaction (e.g., speech and gesture recognition), machine learning (e.g., classification and feature extraction), software (e.g., web browsers, distributed agents), electronics (e.g., energy-efficient microprocessors, head-mounted displays), design methodology in user-centered design, and rapid prototyping have enabled a new class of computers—wearable computers. The lecture takes the viewpoint of a potential designer or researcher in wearable computing. Designing wearable computers requires attention to many different factors because of the computer’s closeness to the body and its use while performing other tasks. For the purposes of discussion, we have created the UCAMP framework, which consists of the following factors: user, corporal, attention, manipulation, and perception. Each of these factors and their importance is described. A number of example prototypes developed by the authors, as well as by other researchers, are used to illustrate these concepts. Wearable computers have established their first foothold in several application domains, such as vehicle and aircraft maintenance and manufacturing, inspection, language translation, and other areas. The lecture continues by describing the next step in the evolution of wearable computers, namely, context awareness. Context-aware computing takes into account a user’s state and surroundings, and the mobile computer modifies its behavior based on this information. A user’s context can be quite rich, consisting of attributes such as physical location, physiological state, personal history, daily behavioral patterns, and so forth. If a human assistant were given such context, he or she would make decisions in a proactive fashion, anticipating user needs, and acting as a proactive assistant. The goal is to enable mobile computers to play an analogous role, exploiting context information to significantly reduce demands on human attention. Context-aware intelligent agents can deliver relevant information when a user needs that information. These data make possible many exciting new applications, such as augmented reality, context-aware collaboration, and augmented manufacturing. The combined studies and research reported in this lecture suggest a number of useful guidelines for designing wearable computing devices. Also included with the guidelines is a list of questions that designers should consider when beginning to design a wearable computer. The research directions section emphasizes remaining challenges and trends in the areas of user interface, modalities of interaction, and wearable cognitive augmentation. Finally, we summarize the most important challenges and conclude with a projection of future directions in wearable computing. Table of Contents: Introduction / The Wearable Computing UCAMP / Design Guidelines for Wearable Computing / Research Directions / Conclusions and Future Challenges

"Steve Mann is a cyborg. He sees the entire world, including himself, through a video lens--the WearComp system. He can control what he sees, liberating his imaginative space from the visual stimuli-billboards and flashing neon signs--that threaten to overwhelm us. While recognizing the danger that human beings could be controlled by technology and the corporations that produce it for profit, Mann is also fascinated by the vast possibilities presented by the wearable computer"--Back cover