Wearable computer - Wikipedia. Wearable computers, also known as body- borne computers or wearables are miniature electronic devices that are worn under, with or on top of clothing. It is also used in media development. Wearable computers are especially useful for applications that require more complex computational support, such as accelerometers or gyroscopes, than just hardware coded logic.

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Wearable computing devices are variously defined. For example, consumers often refer to wearable computers as computers that can be easily carried on the body, or systems with a heads- up display or speech activated. This contrasts with academics that define wearables as a system that can perform a set of functions without being constrained by the physical hardware of the system. This article page will use the broadest definition. Google Glass is an optical head- mounted display supplying a augmented reality perspective, controlled by novel gestural movements.

One common feature of wearable computers is their persistence of activity. There is constant interaction between the wearable and user, so there is no need to turn the device on or off. Another feature is the ability to multi- task. When using a wearable computer, there is no need to stop what one is doing to use the device; its functionality blends seamlessly into all other user actions.

These devices can be used by the wearer to act as a prosthetic. It may therefore be an extension of the user's mind or body. Many issues are common to wearables as with mobile computing, ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing research communities.

These include power management and heat dissipation, software architectures, wireless and personal area networks, and data management. Many companies are considering smart necklace to become the solution form- factor due to its relatively big size that could host extensive amount of hardware and an unparalleled battery pack, and in the same time due to proximity to eyes (for connected AR- glasses with power supply from the necklace), ears (as audio player and for communication through build- in voice controlled communicator or through external smartphone as remote headset with earphones) and mouth (a wide microphone array could be built around the neck to achieve highly effective active noise cancellation). Such form of wearable computer/communicator might prevail over helmets for fashion and appearance issues and over belt- attachable devices for minimizing wires utilization. Areas of applications. This usually includes: the skin, hands, voice, eyes, and arms. Wearables are also receptive to any motion or attention.

Wearable computer items have been developed and applied in the following: Today . The use of wearables for specific applications, for compensating disabilities or supporting elderly people steadily increases. The application of wearable computers in fashion design is evident through Microsoft's prototype of . By this definition, the wearable computer was invented by Steve Mann, in the late 1.

The development of wearable items has taken several steps of miniaturization from discrete electronics over hybrid designs to fully integrated designs, where just one processor chip, a battery and some interface conditioning items make the whole unit. Queen Elizabeth I of England received the wristwatch (while not a computer) from Robert Dudley in 1. It was a small ladies' pocket watch on a bracelet chain.

But it is not a general- purpose computer in the sense of the modern word. Girard- Perregaux made wristwatches for the German Imperial Navy after an artillery officer complained that it was not convenient to use both hands to operate a pocket watch while timing his bombardments. The officer had strapped a pocket watch onto his wrist and his superiors liked his solution, and thus asked La Chaux- de- Fonds to travel to Berlin to begin production of small pocket watches attached to wrist bracelets. In fact, they were held in such disdain that many a gentlemen were actually quoted to say they .

Thorp and Claude Shannon built some computerized timing devices to help them win at a game of roulette. One such timer was concealed in a shoe and another in a pack of cigarettes. Various versions of this apparatus were built in the 1.

Detailed pictures of a shoe- based timing device can be viewed at www. Thorp refers to himself as the inventor of the first . A data- taker would use microswitches hidden in his shoes to indicate the speed of the roulette wheel, and the computer would indicate an octant of the roulette wheel to bet on by sending musical tones via radio to a miniature speaker hidden in a collaborator's ear canal. The system was successfully tested in Las Vegas in June 1. This work was kept secret until it was first mentioned in Thorp's book Beat the Dealer (revised ed.) in 1.

In particular, a group known as Eudaemonic Enterprises used a CMOS 6. K RAM to create a shoe computer with inductive radio communications between a data- taker and bettor. Collins in 1. 97. In 1. 98. 1, Steve Mann designed and built a backpack- mounted 6. Mann went on to be an early and active researcher in the wearables field, especially known for his 1.

Wearable Wireless Webcam, the first example of Lifelogging. It was an early smartwatch, powered by a computer on a chip. Winnebiko II was the first of Steve Roberts' forays into nomadic computing that allowed him to type while riding. This display gave rise to several hobbyist and research wearables, including Gerald .

It used direct- sequence spread spectrum radio links to provide all the usual TCP/IP based services, including NFS mounted file systems and X1. Andrew Project environment. The Hip- PC included an Agenda palmtop used as a chording keyboard attached to the belt and a 1. Later versions incorporated additional equipment from Park Engineering. The system debuted at . Input was through a three- button unit worn on the belt, and output was through Reflection Tech's Private Eye.

The CPU was an 8 MHz 8. MB ROM. Timex Datalink USB Dress edition with Invasion video game.

The watch crown (icontrol) can be used to move the defender left to right and the fire control is the Start/Split button on the lower side of the face of the watch at 6 o' clock. In 1. 99. 3, the Private Eye was used in Thad Starner's wearable, based on Doug Platt's system and built from a kit from Park Enterprises, a Private Eye display on loan from Devon Sean Mc. Cullough, and the Twiddler chording keyboard made by Handykey.

Many iterations later this system became the MIT . Columbia University's augmented- reality system known as KARMA (Knowledge- based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance).

Users would wear a Private Eye display over one eye, giving an overlay effect when the real world was viewed with both eyes open. KARMA would overlay wireframe schematics and maintenance instructions on top of whatever was being repaired. For example, graphical wireframes on top of a laser printer would explain how to change the paper tray. The system used sensors attached to objects in the physical world to determine their locations, and the entire system ran tethered from a desktop computer. The system was built from a modified HP 9.

LX palmtop computer and a Half- QWERTY one- handed keyboard. With the keyboard and display modules strapped to the operator's forearms, text could be entered by bringing the wrists together and typing.

As with the Toronto system, Forget- Me- Not was not based on a head- mounted display. Also in 1. 99. 4, DARPA started the Smart Modules Program to develop a modular, humionic approach to wearable and carryable computers, with the goal of producing a variety of products including computers, radios, navigation systems and human- computer interfaces that have both military and commercial use. In July 1. 99. 6, DARPA went on to host the . In October 1. 99. Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Georgia Tech co- hosted the IEEEInternational Symposium on Wearables Computers (ISWC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Watch Full A Brave Heart (2015) 2002 on this page.

How Tesla Will Change The World. This is Part 2 of a four- part series on Elon Musk’s companies. For an explanation of why this series is happening and how Musk is involved, start with Part 1. One type of WBW post is the “let’s just take this whole topic and really actually get to the bottom of it so we can all completely get it from here forward.” The ideal topic for that kind of post is one that’s really important to our lives, and that tends to come up a lot, but that’s also hugely complex and confusing, often controversial with differing information coming out of different mouths, and that ends up leaving a lot of people feeling like they don’t totally get it as well as they “should.”The way I approach a post like that is I’ll start with the surface of the topic and ask myself what I don’t fully get—I look for those foggy spots in the story where when someone mentions it or it comes up in an article I’m reading, my mind kind of glazes over with a combination of “ugh it’s that icky term again nah go away” and “ew the adults are saying that adult thing again and I’m seven so I don’t actually understand what they’re talking about.” Then I’ll get reading about those foggy spots—but as I clear away fog from the surface, I often find more fog underneath. So then I research that new fog, and again, often come across other fog even further down. My perfectionism kicks in and I end up refusing to stop going down the rabbit hole until I hit the floor. For example, I kind of got the Iraq situation, but there was a lot of fog there too—so when I wrote a post about it, one fog- clearing rabbit hole took me all the way back to Muhammad in 5.

AD. That was the floor. Digging into another part of the story brought me to the end of World War I. Another brought me to the founding of ISIS. Hitting the floor is a great feeling and makes me realize that the adults weren’t actually saying anything that complicated or icky after all. And when I come across that topic again, it’s fun now, because I get it and I can nod with a serious face on and be like, “Yes, interest rates are problematic” like a real person. I’ve heard people compare knowledge of a topic to a tree. If you don’t fully get it, it’s like a tree in your head with no trunk—and without a trunk, when you learn something new about the topic—a new branch or leaf of the tree—there’s nothing for it to hang onto, so it just falls away.

By clearing out fog all the way to the bottom, I build a tree trunk in my head, and from then on, all new information can hold on, which makes that topic forever more interesting and productive to learn about. And what I usually find is that so many of the topics I’ve pegged as “boring” in my head are actually just foggy to me—like watching episode 1. So when it was time to start what I had labeled in my head as “the Tesla post,” I knew this was going to be one of those posts. To understand if and why Tesla Motors matters, you have to understand both the story of cars and the story of energy—two worlds I somehow am simultaneously confused by and tremendously sick of. Just hearing someone say “climate change” or “energy crisis” or “tailpipe emissions” makes me kind of gag at this point—just too much politics, too many annoying people, too much misinformation on all sides, and it’s just hard to know how much I actually care and if there can be a solution to all of it anyway. So I did what I do when my tortoise shits when I’m out of the apartment and then spends hours walking through it and tracking it across everything, including the walls somehow—I rolled up my sleeves, took a deep breath, whispered, “Be a man, Tim,” and started scraping through layers of shit.

If I have to live in a world with people arguing constantly about energy and oil and greenhouse gases and incentive programs, I might as well build myself a proper tree trunk. After weeks of reading and asking questions and writing, I’ve emerged from the tortoise sewage with something that toes the line between a long blog post and a short book. I could have broken this into multiple posts, but it’s all one story and I wanted to keep it all together.

It’ll be a bit of a time investment, but I think you’ll come out of it with a sturdier tree trunk about all of this than you have now. And as it turns out, when it comes to this topic, we may be witnessing a very awesome moment in history without quite realizing it yet.

Two disclaimers before we start: 1) This is a highly politicized issue, but this post has no political agenda. I’m not political because nothing could ever possibly be more annoying than American politics. I think both parties have good points, both also have a bunch of dumb people saying dumb things, and I want nothing to do with it.

So I approached this post—like I try to with every post—from a standpoint of rationality and what I think makes sense. Spoiler: The post is very pro- Tesla. Which might seem suspicious since A) Elon Musk asked me to write about this and B) I just wrote a post calling him the raddest possible man. But two things to keep in mind: First, this isn’t commissioned by Musk, and I’m being paid $0. He suggested I take the issue on because I think he thinks there’s a lack of full tree trunks in people’s heads about it—but he never suggested that I say good things about Tesla, electric cars, or anything else. Second, the currency Wait But Why lives on is integrity. Without it, WBW loses its ability to make an impact.

And integrity came first here, even at the expense of Musk potentially hating me at the end of it, if that’s what was necessary. If I didn’t think this would have made a great WBW topic, I wouldn’t have taken it on, and I’m pro- Tesla in the post because after a ton of learning and thinking—including as many counterarguments to Tesla and its worldview as I could find—that’s how I feel. And with that, let’s dive in.

Contents. Part 1: The Story of Energy. Part 2: The Story of Cars.

Part 3: The Story of Tesla. Without energy, we’d all be like this: But what really is energy? The dictionary says it’s “the property of matter and radiation that is manifest as a capacity to perform work.” And it says “work” is “the exertion of force overcoming resistance or producing molecular change.” Putting that together, we get energy being “the property of matter and radiation that is manifest as a capacity to perform the exertion of force overcoming resistance or producing molecular change.”That was pretty unfun, so for our purposes, let’s call energy “the thing that lets something do stuff.”But the tricky thing about energy is the law of conservation of energy, which says that energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transferred or transformed from one form to another. And since every living thing needs energy in order to do stuff—and you can’t make your own energy—we’re all awkwardly left with no choice but to steal the energy we need from someone else. While the sun’s joules can provide any animal with heat and light, the joules that power all of us from the inside enter the biosphere in the first place when the sun gives them to plants.

That’s how food is invented—plants know how to take the sun’s joules and turn them into food. At that point, all hell breaks loose as everyone starts murdering everyone else so they can steal their joules. We use “the food chain” as a cute euphemism for this murder/theft cycle, and we use the word “eating” to refer to “stealing someone else’s joules and also murdering them too.” A “predator” is a dick who always seems to want your joules over everyone else’s, and “prey” is just some sniveling nerd you particularly like to bully and steal lunch money from.

Plants are the only innocent ones who actually follow the Golden Rule, but that’s just because they have the privilege of having the sun as their sugar daddy—and humans are the biosphere’s upsetting mafia boss who just takes what he wants from anyone he wants, whenever he wants. It’s not a great system, but it works.