Wearable Computing Group
Encyclopedia
The Wearable Computing Group is a research group at the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

 that focuses on the development and evaluation of wearable and mobile computing technology for facilitating and augmenting human collaboration.

Started in 1995 by Professor Zary Segell and Ph.D Student Gerd Kortuem, the group specializes in exploring the community aspects of wireless, wearable and peer-to-peer technologies.

Personal Area Network

P2P
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

 computing and wireless network technologies has made the design of ad hoc networks of mobile devices to support the ad hoc networks of the people who wear them. This fundamental unit cited by Kortuem and other computing researches is known as the personal area network
Personal area network
A personal area network is a computer network used for communication among computer devices, including telephones and personal digital assistants, in proximity to an individual's body. The devices may or may not belong to the person in question. The reach of a PAN is typically a few meters...

.

Kortuem treats the personal area networks as building blocks of a dynamic community of networks with emergent capabilities of its own. The community of personal area network users within a geographic location functions as a wireless mess network, dynamically self organizing a cloud of brad-band connectivity as nodes came in and out of physical proximity, providing always-on Internet connection to members. With Bluetooth technology, member of the communities allow engagement in more timely information exchange face to face and WiFi technologies provides the infrastructure for neighbourhood-wide and Internet-wide communication.

Auranet

Auranet is the University of Oregon's Wearable Computing groups implementation of a wearable community. The Auranet is the network of computing devices that exist in a person's social space or "Aura". The Auranet is where people and their personal computing devices have face-to-face encounters.

The idea of wearable community is based on the belief that non-monetary exchange of value is the essence of community. A community is about helping each other, about shared values, and creating and managing mutually beneficial relations. In that respect, wearable communities are similar to community web sites on the Internet. Their common goal is to use technology to enhance the spirit of cooperation. But what community sites do it in Cyberspace, wearable communities do in real life.

Distributed reputation system

Wearable devices can share bandwidths by acting as nodes in an ad hoc wireless network, which can exchange media and messages using links between individual nodes to transmit data. However, when members of the communities allow their computers to automatically exchange information, issues of trust and privacy intervene.

In order for mobile ad hoc communities to self-organized properly, a trust system is needed to make people feel secure about their privacy and trust to allow effective contribution of their personal area network. The group has therefore prototyped a distributed reputation system, that uses encryption techniques to secure wearable community infrastructure.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK