Wearable Computing

Preface

Wearable computing is a relatively new area of research and development that aims at supporting people in different application domains: health care, fitness, social interactions, video games, and smart factory. Wearable computing is based on wearable sensor devices (e.g. to measure heart rate, temperature, or blood oxygen), common life objects (e.g. watch, belt, or shoes), and personal handheld devices (e.g. smartphones or tablets). Wearable computing has been recently boosted by the introduction of body sensor networks (BSNs), i.e. networks of wireless wearable sensor nodes coordinated by more capable coordinators (smartphones, tablets, and PCs).

In particular, BSNs enable a very wide range of application scenarios in different industry sectors. We can categorize them into different domains: e‐Health, e‐Emergency, e‐Entertainment, e‐Sport, e‐Factory, and e‐Social.

e‐Health applications span from early detection or prevention of diseases, elderly assistance at home, to post‐trauma rehabilitation after surgeries. e‐Emergency applications include BSN systems to support fire fighters, response teams in large‐scale disasters due to earthquakes, landslides, terrorist attacks, etc. e‐Entertainment domain refers to human–computer interaction systems typically based on BSNs for real‐time motion and gesture recognition. e‐Sport applications are related to the e‐Health domain, although they have a nonmedical focus. Specifically, this domain includes personal e‐fitness applications ...