MoCCa: A Mobile Communication and Computing Architecture

We present an integrated computing system designed to help increase the efficiency of mobile workers, specifically field service engineers. Our solution, a Mobile Communications and Computing Architecture (MoCCA), consists of both a futuristic award-winning concept design and a first-generation working prototype. The prototype has support for collaborative multimedia: on-the-move networking for high-tech equipment maintenance using voice, video clips, and access to maintenance databases. We describe the user interface, software, and hardware architectures of our prototype. The hardware architecture uses a multi-tier networking scheme to trade off a small lightweight client and high computation power and battery life. Finally, we present lessons learned from user tests in applying a novel mobile computing architecture to a complex real-world task.