Wearable Computing - a new approach in Concurrent Enterprising

Abstract

Wearable computing means a paradigm shift: instead of working at the computer users are supported by computing systems in their primary tasks. Thus wearable computing is ideal to develop new insight into the behaviour of the Concurrent Enterprise. Currently wearable computing is still a technology of niches and in a laboratory stage. However, with wearIT@work a project dedicated to applications was launched by the European Commission (EC IP 004216). The first 18 months of this project are over and demonstrators, evaluations and results are available. In this paper the concept of the project is briefly introduced and results are presented showing the impact of wearable computing for the Concurrent Enterprise. This impact is based on the cyclic and user centred design approach in developing the different pilot application demonstrators for the four application domains of maintenance, production, healthcare and emergency response.