Wearable oxygen and conductimetric sensors were constructed by microfabrication techniques for monitoring biochemical substances. The wearable oxygen sensor (thickness 84 μm) was calibrated against dissolved oxygen from 0 to 8.0 mg/l, and was successfully used to monitor the transcutaneous oxygen pressure by applying the device onto the forearm skin surface. Tear fluid conductivity was possible to be measured by applying the wearable sensor to the human subject’s temporal lower cul-de-sac, thus evaluating electrolyte concentration and turnover rate in tear for normal, healthy volunteers and dry-eye patients.

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Digitization of lengthy personal experiences would be made possible by constant recording using wearable video cameras. It is conceivable that the resulting amount of video content would be extraordinarily large. In order to retrieve and browse the desired scenes, a vast amount of video would need to be organized with structural information. In this paper, we attempt to develop a “Wearable Imaging System” that is capable of constantly capturing data, not only from a wearable video camera, but also from various kinds of sensors. The data from these sensors are appropriately extracted and processed by Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to achieve efficient video retrieval and browsing.

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This paper describes the basic development of a wearable system that reinforces the user’s memorization about interaction to objects by drawing attention and inducing rehearsal with a replay of recorded events. The interaction of the user is captured by a camera and other sensors attached to the user and the environment. The video fragments are played back with relevant information at appropriate times to the user for effectively reinforcing memorization. We built a prototype system using an RFID system, a miniature camera and an arm posture sensor for detecting and recording interaction events.

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This paper describes the validity of the prototype of wearable computer for subjective experience recording from the perspective of cognitive behavior in everyday situation. As precedent studies, we quote the vision memory and space cognition for representing cognitive behavior for everyday memory inducing the hypothesis that peripheral vision recording will be effective to recall the past memories with realistic sensation. For evaluating the hypothesis, we conducted two experiments, one is to evaluate the eye tracking profile between reading task and space gazing task and the other is to evaluate the dependency of peripheral vision in routine walking task in an accustomed environment.

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K-eXplorer is a real-world interface consisting of a K-tai (cellphone) and distributed combo ports that operate between people and objects. By using K-eXplorer the user is able to access, link and manage information stored in a versatile database through a K-tai and combo ports. A combo port has multiple I/O ports that input data from a K-tai, real-world objects (information media and the environment), the server and a human to transfer it to the other. We have developed a prototype combo port equipped with an IrDA module, RFID readers, a camera, switches, and a network module.

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WatchPad 1.5 is a watch-shaped wearable computer worn on the wrist. It is an ARM7-based low-power Linux system with Bluetooth wireless connectivity and a multi-modal user interface. It is designed for a hardware platform for wearable computing researches. This paper focuses on WatchPad 1.5 as a universal interface for pervasive computing environments and proposes a concept, called “WatchPoint”, which manage to accept real-time spatial relationships between user’s hand movement and physical objects as input.

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We report an experiment on the efficiency of auditory pointing. We used a wearable auditory system, which consists of an auditory localization device based on HRTF, motion sensors that measure the angular posture of the head and the pointing device, and a notebook PC to control these device and sensors. We quantitatively evaluated the time required for pointing the target icon, and the effect of noise, or destuctors, during the pointing operation. Through these experiments, we confirmed that the interaction method based on the auditory localization is feasibile.

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This paper describes a Functionally-Distributed (FD) hand tracking method for hand-gesture-based wearable visual interfaces. The method is an extensionof the Distributed Monte Carlo (DMC) tracking method which we have developed. The method provides coarse but rapid hand tracking results with the lowest possible number of samples on the wearable side, and can reduce latency which causes a decline in usability and performance of gesture-based interfaces. The method also provides the adaptive tracking mechanism by using the sufficient number of samples and the hand-color modeling on the infrastructure side. This paper also introduces several applications of the hand-gesture-based wearable visual interfaces implemented on our wearable systems.

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Introducing RFID applications for social infrastructure including the road, highway, harbor, railway.

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The target of ubiquitous computing environment is to support users to get necessary information and services in a situation-dependent form. In order to support users. We proposed a location-based information support system by using Compact Battery-less Information Terminal (CoBIT). A CoBIT can communicate with the environmental system and with the user by only the energy supply from the environmental system and the user. The environmental system has functions to detect the terminal position and direction, to read and write information proper to the terminal, to communicate with terminals, to recognize the objects in the environment communicating with other computers in order to realize situated support. In this report, we show some new CoBITs for real use and discuss the usabilities.

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This paper describes the out-of-door experiment environment completed at Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), the University of Tokyo, for supporting experiments of the wearable and mobile computers. This environment consists of wireless LAN networks, networked cameras and floor-embedded radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. These tags are embedded 1.2m each so that the location of the user is detected in few score centimeter by seeking the received RFID tags’ ID from the known position data. Some projects that have relation with this environment are also introduced in this paper.

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The objective of this paper is to embody accessible design reflecting proper usability by utilize communication function for visually impaired user of www. In order to accomplish this objective, we define there are users in the core of design. So, all of technologies and designing are centralized on users. In our research, the methodology of designing by approach from user engineering -in media of today, products, system are developed and improved according to user’s view point- is investigated. Further more, in order to support designing system by investigated methodology, the user investigates system and accessbility evaluation system are constructed in www. It is proven that the proposed methodology, is effective in accessible design for people who need special interface not only healthy people.

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This paper describes about method for evaluating ecological communication on web. To make visiting people to ecological site, we have to prepare preconditions for their easy contact. The preconditions points web usability and communication techniques. By researching about usability and communication, we can propose the result as ideal guidelines on working of ecological site.

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There are not enough useful standard methods or guidelines to design and establish web application such as electric commerce. In this paper, guidelines to make web application are proposed as an example of improving built to order system that is shopping service for personal computer on web by EPSON DIRECT CORPORATION. Previous built to order system had problem that many user often mistook to input their information such as address, telephone number and credit card number. First, causes of user mistaking on the previous system were analyzed from viewpoint of user. We formulated three hypotheses of mistaking: 1) not suitable items of order form, 2) confusion by four user types (personal, company or other user), 3) not smooth operation on web pages. Then improvement points such as new items and page layout were considered on these hypotheses. Next, the built to order system was improved and its usability was evaluated. As the result of evaluation, the improved system has good usability. This confirmed that improvement based on the hypotheses from viewpoint of user is one of useful approarches to make useful web application.

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This paper introduce an example of applying usability inspection methods to developing Consumer Audio-Video Equipments.

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IST (Fujitsu Info Software Technologies: headquarter located in Shizuoka Japan) specializes in computer software development with 741 employees. After two years of preparation, IST started the incorporation of usability testing phases into its software development process from Apr. 2002. IST is said to be the first IT company in Japan to define and to enforce a strict rule of applying usability testing to all of the software products before going into product inspection phase performed by quality assurance team. In Japan, usability testing has been so far tentatively applied to the important or representative products only. In a number of enterprises, a section or a department was established to enforce the enterprise level deployment of usability testing on their products. They succeeded in partial deployment without getting unanimous agreement on the application of usability testing on all the products. However, we succeeded in applying usability testing to all the products we release. In this paper we analyze why we succeeded and discuss the testing results and what we are planning to do from now on.

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We did a survey for the product purchasers, then verified the following hypothesis. On products for daily uses, surprisingly it isn’t being used by the function. Even if it is used, “Lasting-barriers” that learning effect isn’t raised exists in both of the hardware and the software. And “IL-matrix” is effective to evaluate a level of importance of a barrier. And we examine the reason why “Will for master” of users falls down after a product is purchased.

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Data broadcasting service is expected that anyone is able to get information quickly by easy operations. In order to inspect effects of the trackball type remote-control device in operation of data broadcasting contents, operation of data broadcasting contents with two types of remote-control devices by aged people was evaluated. As a result, it was found that some problems in using the button type remote-control device were improved by the trackball type remote-control device.

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[in Japanese]

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Firstly, in this paper, we evaluated our remote control system for networked appliances, which display a user interface to operate target appliance just by directing the remote control device to the target appliance. Compare with menu based remote control system, users evaluated this system that they could operate multi appliances easily and intuitively. However, in the case of appliance selection lined close together, reliability of target selection decreased. This reason is that gaps between target appliances and users’ pointing position were not small enough. Therefore, as the next step, we analyzed users pointing characteristics where users point targets using handy remote control device.

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By using TV conference system, users can communicate not only with verbal information but also nonverbal information, such as facial expression and gesture. However, when users collaborate to construct real objects between distant sites, it is difficult to instruct how to select, move and rotate 3D objects intuitively. In this paper, we propose an efficient support system for remote collaboration, in which users can express instructions, such as selection, movement and rotation. Firstly, we analyzed differences of communication methods among face to face, TV conference system and two types of direction systems; cursor projection system and line projection system. The systems can display cursor or line as instruction from remote site users on real objects by projector. As a result, cursor system is the most suitable to instruct selection and movement, however there is no efficient instruction method for rotation. Therefore we developed cube system that project rotatable CG cube to remote site.

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