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Wearable computing, where users can wear computers anywhere and at any time, is slowly becoming a reality because of recent technological advancements. When users access various services in wearable computing environments, they want to define new services by themselves. Therefore, we propose a new framework for constructing context-aware applications in wearable computing environments. Our framework, called Wearable Toolkit, consists of an event-driven rule processing engine and tools to develop applications. By using our framework, we can define and customise services anywhere and at any time. We found our system helps to create context-aware wearable services from the results we obtained by evaluating it.

Accessing information when we are on the move is a key feature if mobile computing environments, and using an optical see-through head mounted display (HMD) is one of the most suitable ways to do this. Although the HMD can display information without interfering with the user’s view, when the sight behind the display is too complex or too bright, the information displayed can bee very difficult to see. To solve this problem, we have created a way of laying out information for the optical see-through HMD. The ideal area for displaying information is determined by evaluating the sight image behind the HMD captured by a pantoscopic camera mounted on it. Moreover, if there is no suitable area for displaying information, our method select involves using the sight image around users use to the ideal direction and instructing them to face the direction. Our method displays information to ideal areas.

Because of advances in information technologies, car navigation systems have come into widespread use as useful tools to guide drivers where they want to go. Conventional car navigation systems present the most suitable route according to a destination input into the system. However, since the required operation to input the destination costs so much, users do not usually use car navigation systems for daily driving. In this paper, to exploit the effective functions of car navigation systems, we propose a new system that automatically predicts user purpose and destination. The proposed car navigation system presents various information based on predicted purpose without interaction from users.

Wearable computing environments are slowly becoming a reality, worn and used by a user wherever he or she goes. As a result, a lot of attention is given to navigation systems that provide various information according to the users' situation. In this paper, we identify the requirements of wearable navigation systems and propose an event-driven navigation platform to fulfil them. Since the behaviors of our platform are described in a set of event-driven rules, users can adopt a variety of attached devices and customize system configurations. Moreover, we have developed a prototype and made an experimental study for its evaluation. Using our system, service providers can easily construct flexible wearable navigations.

In recent years, e-mail has become widespread explosively and it became one of very important communication tools which anyone can use easily. Here, the wearable computing has also attracted a lot of attention. In wearable computing environments, a user brings and uses his/her own computer wherever he/she goes. Therefore, we can construct a new mail system by utilizing the features of wearable computing such as "hands-free", "always on", and "supporting daily life". In this paper, we propose a mail system for wearable computing environments, called aware-mail (active wearable system applying rule-based engine for mail). Our system provides new type of communications in wearable computing environments, such as automatic mail processing according to the user's situation and exchanging information with other users by mail-based P2P communications.

The conventional approaches for constructing real-space-based 3D space on the WWW are very costly in initial modeling and in network access in its operation. The image based rendering (IBR) approach focuses on more convenient handling of the real space, but the obtained space is usually constrained by the difficulty in image analysis. As a result, the number of people who use virtual space on the WWW is still limited. In order to relax the modeling cost and the accessing cost through the WWW to let everyone enjoy easy construction and easy browsing of real and attractive virtual space, the authors propose a simple approach where they use scenic images such as those taken by a digital camera without distorting them. In the system, users can browse and construct real and attractive virtual space on the WWW more easily than ever.

We developed a wireless sensor network system for supporting context-awareness of nursing activities in hospitals. Our system is aimed at automated recording of nursing work, providing context-aware services to nurses and visualising analytical results from nursing histories. The system consists of heterogeneous devices utilising three kinds of wireless networks: a ZigBee TM (ZigBee is a registered trademark of the ZigBee Alliance)-based location sensor network, a Bluetooth TM (Bluetooth is a trademark owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc., USA)-based body-area sensor network for capturing nurse activities and a Wi-Fi TM (Wi-Fi is a registered trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance)-based network for communication between PDAs worn by nurses and a server PC. We illustrate the layered structure of the entire system as well as algorithms for estimating nurse locations and activities during their operations in a hospital. These estimated results are managed by a real-time database system with which nurse contexts can be visualised in real time on a server PC and/or PDAs. We also show empirical results evaluating the performance of retrieving, analysing and visualising detailed nursing contexts.

In wearable computing environments, an optical see-through head mounted display (HMD) is one of the most suitable wearable devices for displaying information. Although the HMD can display information without interfering with the user's view, the displayed information is difficult to see when the HMD background is too complex or too bright. We have created an information layout method for the optical see-through HMD that takes the background into account. It determines the ideal area for displaying objects by evaluating the HMD background captured by a camera.