:LinuxDevices.com: Ripley -- a Linux-based wearable computer
LinuxDevices.com: Ripley -- a Linux-based wearable computer Jun 2, 2001, 14 :21 UTC (0 Talkback[s]) (4607 reads) (Other stories by Cliff Leong)
Here's a profile of the Ripley wearable computer project. Initially
modeled loosely on Prof. Steve Mann's wearcomps, the project's gone
off on its own direction. The current versions support the 2.2 or 2.4 kernels,
boast speech recognition and a full complement of applications.
"The Ripley wearable computer project was born in 1999 with the purpose of allowing us to liberate ourselves from the
desktop computer.
Our first goal was to build an anytime, anywhere general purpose computer that is efficient enough to run on consumer
grade batteries for several hours, small and light enough to wear on the body, wirelessly connected to the Internet at all
times, and easy to interact with even while doing other things (i.e. non-modality of computer/human interface).
Existing computing devices, such as laptop computers and PDAs, were
unsatisfactory. Laptops are just small desktop computers with the same modality of
use. Users of laptops need to be in "laptop mode" -- sitting with the laptop balanced
on their laps and their attention focused on its screen and keyboard. In order to do
something else, they then need to break away from laptop mode -- which makes it
difficult to continue to interact with the laptop. PDAs, on the other hand, were simply
not robust enough to handle most of the situations we envisioned."
