Important Dates:

ISWC 2008 Workshops and Tutorials:

-Workshop on the Role of Design in Wearable Computing
-International Forum on Applied Wearable Computing
-Tutorial on Wearability in Wearable Technology
-Tutorial on Sensing and Actuation: End-to-End Wireless Systems Design for Mission Critical Applications  
-Tutorial on Relative Positioning Technology

Workshop on the Role of Design in Wearable Computing

This workshop will provide a forum to discuss the role of design in wearable computing.  Wearable computing spans a broad range of interests and expertise, not all of which can be adequately represented by a technical paper in an IEEE Computer Society proceedings.  As wearable computing becomes more mainstream and if it is to continue becoming more mainstream, it is important for ISWC to provide appropriate venues for presenting the latest advances in textile, fashion, and industrial design. The objective of this workshop is to come up with a set of recommendations on what the appropriate venues should be and to discuss what the important design issues are for wearable computing.

Submission Deadline: August 15
Website: http://www.ece.vt.edu/tlmartin/iswc08_design_workshop/index.html
2007 workshop proceedings: http://www.ece.vt.edu/tlmartin/iswc07_design_workshop/index.html

Instructor

Dr. Thomas L. Martin is an associate professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. His areas of research include wearable computing, low-power systems, electronic textiles, and pervasive computing.  He received his BS in electrical engineering with a minor in VLSI Systems Engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1992 and his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999.  In 2006 he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his work on electronic textiles and wearable computing. 

International Forum on Applied Wearable Computers

The IFAWC will be held in conjunction with ISWC this year. IFAWC focuses on applied research in wearable computers.

Submission Deadline: July 1
Website: http://www.ifawc.org

Tutorial on Wearability in Wearable Technology

Wearability, or the relationship between a worn technology and the ability or desire of the user to wear it, is a key element in the successful design of wearable technologies. Wearability addresses the physical, cognitive, and emotional state of the user, and the impact of the wearable technology on the user's homeostasis in each area.

This tutorial will provide the participant with an overview of the pertinent variables and design considerations for the design of truly wearable technologies. We will address factors related to anatomy, ergonomics, cognitive science, psychology, sociology, textile science, interface design, and
apparel design.

The tutorial is geared toward novices in wearability study, including other specialists in other sub-fields of wearable technology research and design, as well as newcomers to the field. There is no pre-requisite knowledge for the course: due to time constraints, an overview approach will be taken,
with the goal of exposing the participant to the breadth of issues to be explored in human-centered wearable technology design. The tutorial will conclude with a hands-on design activity in which the concepts discussed will be applied.

Instructor

Dr. Lucy Dunne is Assistant Professor of Apparel Design and Wearable Technology in the University of Minnesota's School of Design. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from University College Dublin, and a BS and MA from Cornell University in Apparel Design. She has worked in fashion design, functional apparel design, and wearable technology design, and has been an active ISWC participant since 2001. She co-authored the Making Computers Wearable tutorial at ISWC 2003, and Humans: a Tutorial at ISWC 2006. Her current research is focused on garment-integrated body sensing.

Tutorial on Sensing and Actuation: End-to-End Wireless Systems Design for Mission Critical Applications

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer immense potential for performing detailed multi-parameter measurements in a variety of applications. When coupled with actuation, this technology could become even more powerful.

Application led designs rarely need the amount of complexity available at a theoretical level. Instead, concerns for robustness, data integrity, ease of use, long-life, reliability, and maintainability take over as primary design concerns. Practical deployment design processes can be considerably sped up by starting with simpler systems that are more focused on smaller sets of target applications. The design concerns specific to that application set will naturally lead the design process in terms of selecting what off-the-shelf hardware and software can be used, and what bespoke components need to be developed to satisfy the application as a whole.

This tutorial will support the exposition of design techniques and design choices by focusing on an example from within the area of Embedded Body Sensor Networks. The application is that of remote health monitoring of human subjects during safety-critical missions. The embedded body sensor network is neither large nor widely distributed but there are a number of fundamental requirements (such as, the size of the nodes, wearability of the instrumentation, robustness, reliability and fault-tolerance, etc) that dictate the majority of the design and implementation choices.

The tutorial will be of interest to a wide range of conference participants: designers and developers of real-life sensor networks applications for the Body Sensing domain; developers of integrated miniature, embedded technology for smart textiles; evaluators of wearable technologies; end-users of body-related embedded technology (clinicians, physiotherapists, bio-mechanics engineers, etc)

Website: http://cogentee.coventry.ac.uk/~jamesb/iswc08

Instructors

Dr. Elena Gaura received her BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Cluj Napoca, Romania in 1989, following it with an MSc two years later. In 1991, she joined the same institution on a professional basis. In 1996 she came to the UK, initially as a Research Assistant at Brunel University, Uxbridge.

In 1998 she joined Coventry University, in order to pursue her PhD, researching the integration of Artificial Intelligence (in particular Neural Networks) and MEMS sensors to produce enhanced performance Microsystems. By the time her PhD was awarded in 2000, she was serving as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. With the establishment of the Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre in 2006, Elena was appointed as the inaugural director.

Over the course of her career, Elena has accrued a sturdy academic reputation. She has over 100 refereed publications, and is a frequent organiser of symposia at Nanotech (NSTI), the world’s largest nanotechnology conference. She is a member of many nationwide Microsystems advisory bodies and, since 2002, a member of the EPSRC College of Peers. She has recently become the Co-Chair of the UK Wireless Intelligent Sensing Interest Group (WiSIG).

She remains highly active in the research field, exploring issues of Microsensors Integration and Large Scale Wireless Networks, deploying MEMS technology to develop new techniques for integrating sensors, actuators and networking functions, with the ultimate aim of designing autonomous systems capable of large scale field sensing. In addition, she is engaged in examining the potential of AI techniques to solve design problems, particularly drawing on wireless sensing and AI integration. 

Dr. James Brusey received his BApSc with distinction in Computer Science from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (now RMIT University), Melbourne, Australia, in 1996. In 2002, the same institution awarded him his PhD in Artificial Intelligence for a thesis entitled “Learning Behaviours For Robot Soccer”, which also won the Australian Computer Science Association’s award for Best Computer Science PhD Thesis for Australia and New Zealand in 2004. He has augmented his research reputation with wide ranging professional experience in both industry and academia. His early experiences in the Swinburne Institute of Technology twined both threads together: as a systems programmer he maintained the in-house software and mainframe, whilst also lecturing on x86 Assembly Language. 

In 1989, he began working for AXA Australia as a systems programmer. The reliable and robust systems he developed earned his team two company awards for excellence. He left AXA in 1996, but within two years had returned to perform legacy mainframe maintenance and provide training for staff in diagnostic methods and mainframe assembly languages. This experience embellished his industrial training acumen acquired during his time as a technical consultant with Storage Technology Australia (StorageTek). 

In October 2002 he came to the UK as a Senior Research Associate in Cambridge University’s Institute of Manufacturing, initially on a grant from MIT’s Auto-ID Centre. At Cambridge he acquired significant hands-on experience of working with RFID, constructing a realistic RFID demonstration, employing industrial robots. This formed a key deliverable for the Auto-ID Centre project. The Centre subsequently became EPCglobal Inc, and is responsible for the EPCglobal set of standards and specifications governing the use of RFID in the retail sector. These standards are founded on the principle of an Electronic Product Code (EPC), which uniquely identifies everything from forklift trucks to fizzy drinks cans. He joined the Cogent team as a Senior Lecturer in 2007. 

His current research interests include developing fault tolerant and robust wireless sensor network systems.  

Tutorial on Relative Positioning Technology

In contrast to infrastructure supported location systems, relative positioning technology identifies the relative position of objects to each other solely based on local sensors and processing only. This tutorial provides background and hands-on experience over sensor technologies and modalities, measurement principles, systems, distributed algorithms and applications for relative positioning technologies. It will also give hands on insight to relative positioning using the RELATE relative positioning sensor network platform as an example. The tutorial will also discuss other practical issues as price, constraints for integration and use of relative positioning technology. The tutorial will be suitable also for people not familiar with positioning systems, algorithms and hardware.

Instructors

Michael Beigl: TU Braunschweig
Paul Lukowicz: University of Passau