Changing the working environment of mobile workers by wearable computing

This paper focuses on the state-of-the art and future of wearable computing applications in industry and business. The research is performed in the context of the EU FP6 project wearIT@work. Key findings like the open wearable computing hardware platform (OWCP) and the open wearable computing software framework (OWCF) as well as midterm results of the project will be outlined. As the project strongly follows a cyclic and user centred design approach much effort was put on investigations with end users in the four application domains of maintenance, production, healthcare and emergency response. Demonstrators of wearable computing solutions were achieved and evaluations with end users performed.