Computing devices of tomorrow will neither necessarily sit on a desk, nor be held with hands. They can be worn around a human body like watches, eye glasses, necklaces, footwear, and even wristbands. That’s the compelling mantra that underlies the rapid rollout of wearable devices.
Just one year after Samsung and Qualcomm released wearable smart watches like Galaxy Gear and Toq, respectively, a proliferation of wearable devices come out of nowhere.
In a joint-effort with its hardware partners, PC chip giant Intel unveiled an array of wearable computing devices like smart watches, Jarvis earpiece, a smart ear bud, a wearable baby caretaker called as `Smart Turtle`, and even a charging bowl for wearable devices .
Intel also brought to the fore a new breed of 22nm SoC codenamed as Edison in what the chip maker said is a Pentium-class computer meant to power wearable devices
Sony Corp. threw a spotlight on its Smart Watch 2 and Smart Band in what the company said will be at the heart of its Smart Wear experience initiatives. Meanwhile, Panasonic took the wraps off a wearable 4K camcorder that can be worn around a user‘s shoulder.
LG Electronics showcased a fitness-purpose wrist band and a Bluetooth-based wearable heart rate earphone. Reebok International demonstrated a skullcap called CheckLight that comes with a wealth of sensors to track head injuries.
Venture start-ups are also joining the craze for wearable devices. 3L Labs Co., Ltd. of Korea grabbed attentions debuting a footwear insole called as FootLogger, a wearable device that comes awash in MEMS accelerometer and pressure sensors to log a user’s daily waling activities, like walking distance, walking balance, and the number of strides.
Start-up Zamzee has worked UnitedHealthcare Services Inc. to offer a wearable device that lets kids track their health and get rewards.
According to CEA, a show organizer of CES International Trade Show 2014, about 300 exhibitors showcased a wide variety of wearable devices for healthcare and digital fitness.
Helped by rapid breakthrough technology innovations in MEMS sensors, wireless connectivity, and optical sensing, and CPUs, computing devices become far smarter, more mobile and more importantly, far smaller ?small enough to wear them around our body.
“The combination of MEMS sensors and a wealth of wireless connectivity technologies are combining to make devices more intelligent, more adjustable to neighbors, and autonomous and dynamic. While sensors can detect changes in real world, for example, wireless technologies like cellular and Wi-Fi can allow devices to constantly adjust or update themselves following on the incoming information,“ said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist with CEA.
Yet, wearable devices have a long way to go before they hit critical mass. Despite the hypes and excitements about their market potentials, the industry is still struggling to define what wearable devices are like as well as what they are supposed to do. Neither does it set any standards for key building block technologies like a display panel and a second battery, nor specifications for CPUs, memory chips, and UIs.
For example, Intel thinks that wearable devices must be a stand-alone, full-scale computing device that performs on its own right, rather a companion accessory device to its host device like a smartphone. At a pre-opening keynote speech for CES 2014 held on January 6 in Las Vegas, Intel’s new CEO Brian Krzanich said, “We asked ourselves why aren’t wearables everywhere, ” said he. Added he, “The reason is most wearables are not stand alone devices requiring interaction with another gadget to work.”
Built with its Quark processor core, the Edison chip is indeed powerful enough to power a Pentium-class PC, boasting as fast a clock speed as its 400MHz Galileo CPU. It runs on an open source Linux OS as well as Windows.
Sony Mobile Communications also bet that the likes of smart watches and smart glasses will likely become Next Big Things that will drive a new wave of growth opportunities in the post-smartphone era. But, the smartphone maker that it will take a while before these smart wearable devices work as a standalone computing device because its manufacturing eco-system is still far-fetched.
“If we make innovations in the interaction, the product (Sony’s smart watch) will be mainstream. Yet, this won’t be the case until we find the innovations in the interactions. Sony is working on innovation in the user interactions such as gesture-and voice-recognition and even brainwave-perception. Looking forward, we are focusing to replace this smart phone with smart wearable devices,” said Kaz Tajima, senior vice president with UX Creative Design and Planning with Sony Mobile Communications.
“It is possible to put a baseband modem chip and CPU on a smart watch. The biggest challenge is a user interaction. Compared with five inch GUI interactions, this display interaction is very limited. Unless we have a strong voice interaction or eye-tracking interaction, and even brainwave interaction, it is a tough challenge, still,” he added.
Qualcomm echoed Sony’s definition of what wearable devices are supposed to be. Qualcomm’s Toq smart watch is nothing more than a wearable accessory that work in sync with a host device like smart phones to mainly notify or alert users of incoming calls, emails, messages and schedules. The simple applications requirements called Qualcomm to build the Toq watch around ARM Cortex-M3 CPU of between 100 MHz and 300MHz. It also runs on embedded X-Thread RTOS.
“The Toq is nothing more than a reference platform of how wearable devices can be built to survive days of operations. Low power CPU and power-thrift display matters more than performance in our design schematics,” said Ted Nobu said.
True enough, UIs are not the only misfit in the whole bunch of wearable device manufacturing ecosystem. Secondary battery and display panel technologies are still too premature to well befit the system requirements of the wearable devices. For example, secondary battery for wearable devices are not only required to be tiny enough to fit into their ultra-small form factor, but keep up long enough to survive days of operation. Yet, today’s battery technology still falls far short on the criteria.
According to CISCO, about 25 billion connected devices will be around in 2015, and by 2017, the number will double, promising to create potentially huge IoT, or Internet of Things market. Wearable devices are part of the IoT market. And, everyone wants to jump on the lifting boat.
Sony Corp. outlined its new SmartWear experience vision, introducing a range of future SmartWear products like ‘SmartBand” that allows consumers to log daily activities that are represented visually in Sony’s smart phone app ‘Lifelog’ app.
The company also unveiled a head track sensor that can be attached to the back of Sony`s HMZ-T3W head-mount display, and then senses the wearer`s head movement and changes the view from left to right or up and down.
With HeadTracker, consumers can view the footage captured on ActionCam, seeing different angles with a simple turn of the head.
Another eye-catching sensor was Tennis Sensor, which can be attached to a tennis racket and can analyze and record the user`s tennis shot and information including swing speed, ball spin and speed for later review on a smartphone.
Even one Korean venture-start-up named as 3L Labs showcased a Bluetooth-connected insole called as the FootLogger that packs 8 pressure sensors and a three axis accelerometer into its thin form factor. Built with a CPU and other wireless connectivity technology like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the FootLogger can monitor activity levels, walking health issues, energy expenditures, therapy progress, and the onset of dementia or falling problems with solitary older people. Once it uploads all the health and fitness activity information, it can then forward them to a server computer to analyze them. The company even showcases its own charging station for the FootLogger.
