ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 22, 1996 TAG: 9608220051
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RENTON, WASH.
SOURCE: ELIZABETH WEISE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Think computers, only smaller. So small you could swallow one or wear one in your long johns. So smart they'd fade into the background and you'd notice only the information you were getting, not where it was coming from.
That's the hope - and the promise - of wearable computers, the next phase in the personal computing revolution, embodied in the eye-catching array of devices displayed this week at a conference sponsored by the Boeing Co.
Already, the Army has a computer the size of a pill that could be swallowed to track the core body temperatures of soldiers on training missions. A pager-sized alarm would alert the commanding officer that a recruit was about to go into hypothermia.
In San Diego, the Navy is building an intelligent set of long johns woven from conductive polymers that would tell medics what was wrong with a wounded soldier and how soon they should get there.
``It can tell if the soldier is bleeding, and if it's a vein or an artery depending on the oxygen content,'' said Eric Lind of the Naval Command Control and Ocean Surveillance Center.
Although military applications were a major topic at the Boeing Wearable Computers Workshop, civilian uses also were very much in evidence.
Thad Starner of the vaunted Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of several wired individuals wandering the hall. His plastic lab glasses held a Private Eye, a tiny screen that hung in front of his right eye like a jeweler's loupe, allowing him to read off the laptop computer slung over his shoulder.
He was careful not to glance up at the screen when talking, but every once in a while during a lull in the conversation, he discreetly consulted his private information servant, which displays notes, background information and his latest e-mail via a radio link to the Internet.
Already, inspectors at an Air Force F-16 squadron in Ohio call up manuals and airplane schematics using a head-mounted computer screen and voice-activated software, rather than consulting printed manuals.
And Marines are conducting vehicle inspections with the use of wearable computer systems. Previously, two mechanics had to walk around with clipboards, checking off more than 600 items. Now it takes only one person and 40 percent less time using voice-recognition software that allows the mechanic to check items off merely by saying them aloud.
At MIT, researchers envision a world where the computer a person is wearing would interact with its environment, plucking information out of the air for its master's use. Scientists have already set up visual tags throughout the lab that broadcast information to whoever looks at them through a wearable lens.
``We have a plant in our lab which doesn't get watered appropriately,'' Starner said. ``A sensor on the plant notes when it is watered and sends a message to the room computer. A month later, the plant can send the message `I need to be watered' and it would be uploaded to the system so that anyone looking at the plant would see a little note that says, `Water Me!'''
At the University of Washington in Seattle, researchers are building retinal scanning displays that would get rid of the need for head-mounted screens entirely. Users would instead wear a little projector just below the eye that would use a low-power laser to paint a picture one pixel at a time on the retina, at the back of the eye.
How to supply power to wearable computers is still being worked out. At MIT, scientists are investigating the possibility of computers powered by the human body. The military calls it ``energy harvesting.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. It's not a cyborg; it's Thad Starner, all wired upby CNBand lecturing at a workshop on wearable computers. color.