A Toolkit for Prototyping Wearable Computing Applications

Introduction

Few people have the expertise and the skills to explore the new and exciting domain of wearable computing. Our toolkit targets at end-users and was designed to ease the task of prototyping and testing wearable applications. Also users without expertise in electronics or in signal processing are enabled to quickly create and test fully functional wearable prototypes with minimal effort. The platform is build around a standard mobile phone and off-the shelf components and is completed by software libraries. The toolkit allows users to experiment with different sensors and actuators and enables them to create systems that sense human motion and trigger tactile feedback as response to specific postures in real-time.

The Team

The toolkit was developed by Daniel Spelmezan, Adalbert Schanowski, and Jan Borchers.

Technology

Hardware

A standard mobile phone acts as host device for our custom-built sensor/actuator box (SensAct). The host communicates via Bluetooth with up to seven SensAct boxes concurrently. SensAct boxes can be equipped at runtime with different sensors, such as accelerometers, bend sensors, or force-sensitive resistors, and actuators, such as vibration motors, buzzers, or LEDs.

Software

We developed software libraries for the SensAct box and the host device. These libraries offer basic signal processing techniques as well as classification algorithms to classify posture and activity recognition. These classification results are then linked to vibrotactile feedback patterns.
iSenseMobile is the core application that runs on the host device. The host sends control messages to the SensAct boxes, e.g., to trigger an actuator.
iSense is the offline desktop companion to iSenseMobile and supports refinement of initial wearable prototypes.

Publications

• D. Spelmezan, A. Schanowski, J. Borchers. Rapid Prototyping for Wearable Computing. ISWC 2008, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 28-October 1.