Experts at the Rutgers University`s Center for Computer Aids for Industrial Productivity (CAIP) in Piscataway N.J., needed a wearable computer for a recent "Warfighter Preparedness" research demonstration for congressional leaders and U.S. Defense Department officials. They chose the Mobile Assistant IV wearable computer from Xybernaut Corp. in Fairfax, Va.
CAIP researchers made the presentation before members of Congress and officials of the Defense Department in the House Cannon Caucus Room in Washington.
CAIP`s research, which receives partial funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., involves a collaborative computing architecture that enables distributed users in heterogeneous computing environments to cooperate in real-time on a common task.
The demonstration involved an emergency planning scenario where collaborators organized camps, vehicles, and supplies in a graphically represented emergency area. Multimodal technologies from CAIP`s National Science Foundation Stimulate program incorporate the Xybernaut wearable computer with a natural user-computer interface. This capability enabled researchers to establish and control emergency assets by tracking the user`s gaze, interpreting the user`s speech, and responding to the user`s touch.
"The use of the Xybernaut MA IV provides a critical link for obtaining data in the field under high stress and at times, chaotic emergency conditions," says Edward Devinny, senior associate director of CAIP. "In addition to military applications, the use of wearable computers would apply equally to non-military government or civilian organizations, such as FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]."
The Xybernaut Mobile Assistant is a Pentium 233 Mhz belt-worn computer, with as much as 128 megabytes of SDRAM, a 4.3-gigabyte hard drive, two PC card slots, and a color VGA head-mounted display suspended in front of either eye. They system also has a microphone, earphone, or optional wrist-mounted VGA flat-panel touch screen color display, as well as a miniature keyboard, a battery pack, and integrated voice-recognition software.
For more information, contact Xybernaut by phone at 703-631-6925, by fax at 703-631-6734, by e-mail at [email protected], by post at 12701 Fair Lakes Circle, Suite 550, Fairfax, Va. 22033, or on the World Wide Web at http://www. xybernaut.com/. — J.K.
