With advances in sensor technology, we may soon have wearable computers that can direct us home, writes Claire O'Connell
If you work with a computer, you probably have moments of frustration when you want the thing to disappear. But scientists in the Adaptive Information Cluster (AIC) are taking the concept of "disappearing computers" seriously.
Using sensors, these scientists are developing more intuitive approaches, such as computer games where your body becomes the joystick and devices that can prompt people with memory loss to find their way home and perform everyday tasks.
It's about changing the way we interact with computers, according to Paddy Nixon, professor of distributed systems at University College Dublin (UCD) and a principal investigator with the AIC.
"Computers as we know them today are basically screen, keyboard and mouse. The only way you can get into the information is by this single method of interaction," he says. "The disappearing computer concept is about getting rid of that and making the computer respond to all the normal things you do, making it natural and intuitive. It's 'physically disappearing', so you don't see the keyboard and mouse, and it's 'cognitively disappearing', so you are not thinking you are using a computer, you are just doing a task."
The concept has been around for more than a decade, but has recently been boosted by developments in sensors, which are central to the approach, explains Nixon.
For example, he is using location sensors to get kids exercising while playing computer games such as Tetris. "We have sensors called Ubisense tags that know exactly where they are in three-dimensional space - they give you a co-ordinate within a few centimeters."
To play the game, the child wears the credit-card sized sensor on a necklace or in a pocket to track their movements, allowing them to reach up and "move" Tetris bricks on the screen.
"I wanted to get kids to interact with computers because that world really engages them, but without them sitting twiddling their thumbs and undoing the whole of evolution in one fell swoop," says Nixon, who started to develop the idea shortly before the popular Nintendo Wii hand-held game format hit the market.
And as well as being fun, the games also provide a test bed to develop the sensor and programming technology for other causes. "If you can get them to work with a game then there's a whole range of other applications in medicine and everyday life," says Nixon, whose work is funded by Science Foundation Ireland.
Those applications include helping people with partial memory loss. Nixon's group has developed a prototype hand-held device that glows to direct a person towards their home. Taken straight from an Isaac Asimov book, the "glowtag" uses sensors and wireless communication to get location co-ordinates and work out a route home. As the person moves, it glows in the compass-point direction they need to go.
The AIC is currently leading an "open source" project to encourage the international community to develop and adopt free software infrastructure needed for these types of applications, says Nixon.
"We are also looking to embed the concept into mobile phones. Mobile phone producers are putting sensors for GPS, light and temperature, gyroscopes and accelerometers into phones now. And you wouldn't lug a laptop around and try to do all this stuff, but everybody has a mobile phone."