Speaking and listening on the run: design for wearable audio computing

Abstract

The use of speech and auditory interaction on wearable computers can provide an awareness of events and personal messages, without requiring one's full attention or disrupting the foreground activity. A passive "hands-and-eyes-free" approach is appropriate when users need convenient and timely access to remote information and communication services. Nomadic Radio is a distributed computing platform for wearable access to unified messaging via an auditory interface. We demonstrate the use of auditory cues, spatialized audio, and speech I/O in the wearable interface for passive awareness, scaleable notification and navigation/control. The architecture is designed for wired audio wearables and has been extended for distributed wireless operation.