Wearable Systems

These pictures were taken by me, David Kaplan, of the second generation of wearable systems created by the HCII Engineering Design group (myself and Mark D. Miller). The first wearable was used in a study of aircraft maintenance, though I don't have a picture on-line yet...be patient.

The second generation wearable is being used to test new hypothesis that I may or may not get around to putting up here. Hopefully I can con Mark into learning HTML, and he'll be able to discuss the experimental design?

The model in these pictures is Jordan Anderson, a killer Visual Basic programmer, and soon-to-be dos/weenie hater!! Of course, I appologize for the quality of the pictures. I used color film, but couldn't afford the disk real-estate to present them in color, sorry. Maybe someone will be kind enough to provide me with more disk space? Oh, I also blame it on using a damn dos/weenie machine and associated HP scanner that couldn't scan a white piece of paper accurately!

The wearable consists of three major systems:

• Audio -- We use a wireless microphone but teathered headphones and can simulate both full- and half-duplex audio. Headphones are adjustable in two dimensions, and are attached to the hard hat via a couple screws, a plate of copper, and some rubber for friction. The microphone is an el-cheapo Radio Shack 49MHz mic, but provides adequate sound quality for our purposes. It is mounted on the left side and adjustable in three dimensions.
• Video -- Via a head-mounted wireless camera on the left side of the visor, we can send a B/W video signal to a remote helper. The camera is adjustable in two dimensions.
• VGA -- A small VGA monitor is mounted above and in front of the right eye with some optics that place the image directly in front of the right eye. By looking through the optics, the image appears to be floating in front of the user. This piece of the wearable is provided by Virtual Vision. Several projects at CMU are working closely with Virtual Vision to develop wearable technology. The monitor is adjustable in two dimensions (a third, up and down, may be added, though doubtfull).

The Video and VGA systems are connected to a dos/weenie Pentium box donated from Intel. The Intel box is running Intel's pro-share teleconferencing software. We run the audio portion via a different system due to quality concers of the Pro-Share audio sub-system. Connecting to a remote user and sharing applications (e.g., shared manual of a task) is accomplished easily with the Pro-Share software.