Linux watch: Hardware platform for wearable computing research

The Linux Watch is a wearable information access device that is worn on the wrist. It is an ARM7-based low-power Linux system with shortrange wireless communications and a multi-modal (voice and image) user interface with a watch shape and is used as a hardware platform for wearable computing research. The Hands-free Mobile System is a kind of speechoriented client-server system using the Linux Watch. The Linux Watch acts as a front-end user interface device but appears to have all the functions and intelligence of the server including voice-recognition and synthetic speech capability via its multi-modal user interface. This paper describes The Linux Watch hardware platform and the concept of the Hands-free Mobile System. © 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.