Advantages
The following advantages are expected: First of all an improved productivity and flexibility of workers shall be reached. Second an increased safety at work and a decreased pressure towards automation is aimed. All this will allow a simplified access to enterprise information and lead to faster group decisions. Furthermore new information technology products will be introduced into the market based on the pilot applications developed within wearIT@work.
The worldwide market for wearable computers generated over $70 million in supplier revenues in 2001. The market will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 51% through 2006, and grow to over $563 million.
Despite its massive growth, the market for wearables is still a niche market compared to the industrial use of desktop computers. Drivers of a stronger growth will be more standardised hardware and software platforms enabling the new work paradigms. wearIT@work intends to be with its partners a key driver for this market.
Project Aspects and Organisation
This Integrated Project is organised in activity lines (AL) and activity fields (AF) to manage its complex structure and follows a human centred approach. The pilot applications will be developed in a 1 ½ year’s cyclic manner based on the subsequent project structure.
Milestones
The project will result in four pilot applications developed in a cyclic manner. In the first 18 months “Show Cases” are realised and evaluated. Based on the experiences gained there “System Prototypes” are developed, which are the basis of the final “Industrial Pilots” in the four dedicated fields. With 18 milestones the process is controlled.
The project
wearIT@work will prove the applicability of computer systems integrated to clothes, the so-called wearables, in various industrial environments.
These novel computer systems will support their users or groups of users in an unobtrusive way e.g. wearing them as a computer-belt. This will allow them to perform their primary task without distracting their attention enabling computer applications in novel fields.
Interaction with wearables by the user must be minimal to realize optimal system behaviour. For this reason a wearable computer recognizes by integrated sensors the current work progress of a user.
Based on the work context detected the system pushes useful information to its user, e.g. how to proceed with the work. Apart from speech output, media could be optical systems presenting the information, e.g. via semitransparent glasses within the workers visual field. Output devices for tactile feedback will be applicable, too.
Project Goals
One of the major goals is to investigate the user acceptance of wearables. Furthermore methods for user interaction and processes suited to wearables in industry will be identified. It seems to be essential to have methods to detect the work context and have a general architecture of wearables as well as a hardware and software platform for the implementation of wearables. This will be the basis for the four industrial pilot applications, variant production, the clinical pathway, maintenance, and emergency.
