A popular and attractive application of wearable computing are garments with programmable visuals, realized using display technology such as LEDs. Programming such visuals is currently done at a low level, by writing microcontroller programs that control the activation of individual display elements. This approach lacks scalability – programming becomes progressively more unwieldy as the number of display elements increases. It is also ill-suited for implementing complex visual patterns that activate sychronously across multiple garments – when each garment has its own, separately programmed microcontroller, synchronizing visuals on multiple garments is a challenge. Finally, the approach is not particularly intuitive, as there is a disconnect between how display elements are accessed during programming (using pin numbers) and their logical groupings and physical locations on the garment.

I propose adapting some of the tools and workflows traditionally employed in computer animation to the problem of programming wearable visuals. I envision a system that allows authoring of animated visuals on multiple garments in a single place – a graphical animation tool on your PC. The lighting of many display elements across one or more garments could be programmed visually and using a much smaller set of logical parameters. For instance, imagine a shirt with an array of LEDs on the front and the designer wants to light them up in a pulsating heart shape. The designer could define a single animation parameter called “ShirtHeartShape” that maps to the pins of all those LEDs, keyframe its value at different times, and use interpolating curves to achieve a nice, pulsating effect. The designer could also author arbitrarily complex visuals across multiple garments by synchronously animating multiple such parameters. Most of the complexity, both in terms of algorithms and creative effort, would happen in the animation tool. There would be no need to program microcontrollers on individual garments – their only task would be to receive time-indexed animation frames (pin values) from the animation tool and realize the visuals by applying the frame values to appropriate pins.

As a further extension, I also propose an intuitive method for selecting which display elements should be controlled by a particular animation parameter. The idea is to scan the garment using a camera in order to obtain its image, and perform automatic registration to determine the pin numbers and physical locations of all display elements. The designer could then define the parameter mapping by using a sketch-based method (an equivalent of Photoshop lasso tool) to select a subset of LEDs directy on the image of the garment, and the system would automatically extract their pin numbers and compute the mapping.

This is a project that I’ve been thinking for a while, and its kind of expensive but can be really useful in cold days. It is a multimedia jacket to basically control your smartphone through Bluetooth and Arduino.

This coat would have headphones, a microphone, an accelerometer, a gyroscope,  and a LCD that would be used to pass some basic information to the user. In addition to those features you could use discrete solar panels on the shoulders to recharge the batteries of your Arduino and even  track some basic accidents measuring pressure in key regions of your jacket.

The challenges that people might face in this project would be:
– Solar panels are expensive.
– How to determine that the user is in danger.
– How to efficiently use the solar panels to recharge the batteries.

I was thinking about this project during  the last two weeks. It’s about a glove that can be used to play computer games that requires the user to press a limited number of buttons, like Q,W,E or R. It could be adjusted to work with another combination of buttons, in fact. Basically, you would not need a keyboard to play and could use any surface to press the buttons.

This project could be famous and pretty useful among MOBA players like League of Legends and Defense Of The Ancients (DOTA). With these special gloves you can play using a  TV as a monitor and a table as keyboard, for example. As a challenge I think that would be a little hard to configure the Bluetooth plate and create an interface to computers that interact with Lilypad and work properly.

Due: For Class October 7th, 2014

Pitch a project that you think someone should do (not necessarily you).  Make a post in which you describe:

• why you think this project should be done
• what challenges you see in this project

Also include one piece of concept art.  This art could be a sketch, a photo, a video, and so on.

In class you will make this pitch to the rest of the class.  Remember to think big and not worry about the practicality of what you present.  You don’t need to know how to do or make what you pitch.  Just choose something that you think would be a beneficial to have made.

Choose the Assignments for the posting category.

Description

            It’s about a bagpack which has a solar panel attached and this panel charge a battery which can be used to recharge other devices. It comes with an USB cable and seven different adapters.

Why I selected it

            Because is a pretty useful device specially for people who travels a lot and don’t have close outlets, like a trip to a forest or a desert.

How well you think the project accomplishes its objectives

            Very well. The rechargeable battery can be used as a reserve energy source to charge phones, cameras, GPS and other devices that requires energy.

Link to the video:  https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/1274659/video-432428-h264_high.mp4

High5: Promoting Interpersonal Hand-to-Hand Touch
for Vibrant Workplace with Electrodermal Sensor Watches

http://nclab.kaist.ac.kr/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/High5_Camera_Ready_final.pdfa7a05

This work was presented at UBICOMP 2014. The authors present a system designed for detecting and rewarding interpersonal, hand-to-hand interactions such as  “high-fives,” in order to promote a more cheerful and vibrant workplace atmosphere. Users wear smartwatch-like devices, which use acceleration and skin potential to detect when users high-five each other. Each user is then awarded “high-five points,”  which encourages them to high-five each other even more. This presumably continues until everybody’s hands have open wounds on them from all that high-fiving.

What makes this work interesting is that it focuses on characterizing and supporting social behaviors, rather than purely physical ones, as is the case with most wearables. Furthermore, hand movements are  particularly challenging from technical  standpoint, since they have many degrees of freedom and lots of subtlety. We humans are naturally very adept at classifying that subtlety into concrete communicative intents, but teaching a wearable computer how to do it is a whole new ball game. Any researcher who makes tangible progress in that direction  deserves a major high-five:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasongui/meet-vigo-the-very-first-energy-gauge-for-you?ref=category

Vigo is the first wearable device to quantify your alertness. With this data, Vigo can do cool things like nudge you when you’re dozing off or give you recommendations about when to take smarter breaks. With Vigo, staying alert and being your best has never been easier.

I am having so busy days now and I think it will help me to concentrate what I have to do in smarter ways.

I think the project accomplishes its objectives very well because I think many people who wants to work or study smartly will wants it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elemoon/elemoon-wearable-tech-that-expresses-your-unique-s-0

This is a jewelry that combines technology and style. Being a stylized bracelet with LEDs, gravity sensor, Bluetooth and a touch interface you can sync it with your smartphone and has 4 features planned for it. The first is a matching color outfit to express your style on the bracelet. The second being able to receive notifications on the bracelet in a discreet way. The third is to find your phone by swiping the bracelet when sync and it will make the phone emit a sound alert. The last one is basically a Activity Tracking, such as seen on Fitbit.

My two previous posts were very different from this one and I think I needed to search for wearable projects more usable than a armband or a cyclist shirt. A bracelet like this one is something that I can see women in general using it more than the previous projects that I saw and this inspired me to search for more projects that are not so focused in only one thing.

I think it does it perfectly. The bracelet seems light and it is very charming. The interface proposed by the creator also seems easy and the things that it say it can do does not seem difficult to execute. The project is already funded and according to the schedule they will ship it on February 2015.