Wearable PCs are being used in real life already. Workers at Mercedes-Benz plants in Germany were among the first to use them about 10 years ago -- a natural fit for workers who often refer to manuals for directions on complicated assembly, notes Mark Bergman, senior analyst with D.H. Blair Investment Banking Co. in New York.
Next Season's Hardwear.(Edward Newman's Xybernaut Corp., and other companies, are making personal computers that can be worn strapped to a belt)(Brief Article)
Author/s: William Glanz
Issue: July 5, 1999
Dress for success by draining a miniature PC, the latest in tech fashion. Makers of wearable think Ute time is near when people will stroll in the park and read their e-mail.
Edward Newman, the 55-year-old president of Xybernaut Corp., meets with lots of skepticism as he markets his company's product. But Newman has an answer to his doubters: People said the same about the Sony Walkman -- who would walk around with a receiver on his belt and headphones strapped to his skull?
Virginia-based Xybernaut makes wearable PCs, personal computers you can strap to your belt. The invention was a curiosity when the company created its first model in 1990, but as the units shrink, they are attracting attention from businesspeople who think the little PCs can make their workers more mobile and productive. Within the next year, Xybernaut hopes to introduce a consumer model that will allow users to read their e-mail while walking in the park.
Xybernaut and Minnesota-based Via Inc. -- the leading wearable PC manufacturers -- produce computers that consist of a central processing. unit, strapped around a user's waist, and a head-mounted display. Xybernaut's unit weighs 2.9 pounds, and company officials claim the display system on the headset is equivalent to watching a 15-inch screen from two feet away. The system is driven by voice controls, but users can opt for a mini-keyboard or touch screen.
The units are a generation or two slower than the latest home PCs, running at best at a speed of 233 megahertz. Batteries last about six hours before they need recharging. The units cost up to $7,000 each. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology's famed Media Lab, which developed the first wearable PCs in the 1970s, techies are dreaming even bigger dreams of smaller computers. Researchers envision a digital paradise: instant translation among the world's tongues, the ability to monitor events anywhere on the globe, a constant connection to cyberspace.
A group of graduate students who have dubbed themselves the Borg (after the-human-computer menaces of Star Trek) are researching computers small enough to fit into eyeglasses and hip pouches. They carry their processing chips, hard drives, wireless modems and batteries with them as they walk the campus. Some opt for a miniature video monitor -- sort of like a camcorder view screen -- affixed to modified eyeglasses or suspended from a hat brim. Instead of a keyboard or a mouse, a handheld key pad allows them to enter data almost as fast as someone can talk.
Wearable PCs are being used in real life already. Workers at Mercedes-Benz plants in Germany were among the first to use them about 10 years ago -- a natural fit for workers who often refer to manuals for directions on complicated assembly, notes Mark Bergman, senior analyst with D.H. Blair Investment Banking Co. in New York.
Englewood, Colo.-based Datria Systems Inc., which sold its voice command software to the city of Austin, Texas, said wearable PCs have helped municipal workers increase the number of street signs they inventory from 18 to 120 an hour. "It used to be a guy with a paper and pencil" says Kirk Osborn, Datria sales manager.
Xybernaut hopes to sell 8,000 units this year. Via has shipped 800 wearable PCs so far this year, says spokeswoman Lara Zielin. The industry will have sales of about $200 million but could reach $3 billion by 2003, says Bergman.
The industry also is looking to the next sales frontier: the consumer market. The Gartner Group, a Stamford, Conn., technology research firm, believes wearable PCs will remain a curiosity through 2000 but blossom into a mainstream technology by 2006.
That could be a godsend for the memory-impaired. Brad Rhodes, an MIT student, is developing software that will supply the PC wearer with information for any given situation. An example: You recognize someone but can't remember her name. Your wearable analyzes her face and scans a database of people. The machine makes a match and displays her dossier on a tiny screen hanging in front of your eye or whispers through tiny speakers in your ears. While you talk, your wearable taps into global databases via a wireless modern for data relevant to your conversation.
Those MIT guys ... always trying to impress girls.
COPYRIGHT 1999 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
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