Computer Science

Colloquium Details

A Collaborative view of Wearable/Mobile Information Systems

Abstract

One of the information society paradoxes is that the more wired we are the more we appreciate the power of face-to-face interactions. Despite the fact that we are increasingly using electronic communication, many of our daily interactions are a result of planned or chance face-to-face encounters with other people. Wireless PDAs, wearable, implantable, and autonomous personal robots, loosely called in this context wearable/mobile information systems, hold the potential to support such collaborative face-to-face encounters. One of the key desiderata of such systems is to increase and facilitate the social and business face-to-face interaction and collaboration between people. Consequently, wearable/mobile information systems hold the potential to be part of the solution to some of the major societal and scientific great research challenges such as, remedies for anti-aging, prosthetics for differently able people, and new ways to augment the individuals by enhancing and amplifying their mental and sensory capabilities. For the last several years, we have been experimenting with building a variety of collaborative wearable/mobile systems. As a result, we have gained insight in the requirements and the development methodology and tools needed to facilitate and support such systems. This talk will present the general architecture of such systems, a number of collaborative wearable/mobile systems, the Proem software infrastructure for wearable/mobile collaborative information systems and discuss our future research agenda.