BY Leslie Overman
Imagine owning a jacket that tells you that you've forgotten your car keys or wallet before you get out the front door. Georgia Tech students have done more than imagine one — they've made one.
SmartNoti, or Smart Notification, consists of a wristband and hooded jacket that use Bluetooth technology to keep track of the wearer's belongings. The user may tag his must-have items, such as his keys, wallet and laptop, with Bluetooth markers. SmartNoti communicates with the wearer's cell phone, which checks to make sure all of the tags are within a given distance. If the wearer leaves behind one of his marked belongings, his cell phone notifies SmartNoti, which responds with a blink of lights or a vibration.
With its chic, sporty design and slim, fitted cut, the SmartNoti hoodie may appear to be the creation of a fashion designer, but it was developed by computer science and industrial design majors at Tech in a new course on wearable electronics and mobile and ubiquitous computing that was offered during the fall semester. Several student projects designed for the course are on display through May 3 in the On You exhibit at Museum of Design Atlanta.
The project-focused class marked the first collaboration between Georgia Tech's College of Architecture and College of Computing. The instructors were Atlanta fashion designer and Pecan Pie Couture founder Clint Zeagler, ID 04, who taught a course on wearable designs at the Institute last spring, and Thad Starner, associate professor of interactive computing and director of the Contextual Computing Group at Georgia Tech.
"What's great about Georgia Tech is that they allow us to do a lot of stuff in the spirit of innovation," Starner said. He and Zeagler started out with a class of nearly 120 students but "scared half of them away with the aggressive project expectations." The instructors, who bought much of the supplies and equipment needed for their students on their own, hope to get more funding for the course in the future.
"This is the first time we've done it so we're still refining it. I've been doing this mobile ubiquitous computing class for a while and it's a full class. But nowadays, a lot of electronics are wearable. It's finally gotten to a stage away from hobbyists and researchers to widespread acceptance," said Starner, who began toting around his own wearable computer in 1993.
"We're now trying to get the ideas out into the real world, but in order to do that, you've got to make it desirable to the end user. You need to have a good sense of design and a good sense of usability, as well as a good sense of how to do the hard-core computer science. Combining the industrial design methods with the ICS methods and computer hardware work seemed like a good thing. We ended up with students who've never designed hardware before making state-of-the-art textiles."
One group of students designed a stylish new uniform to help fencers improve their form. The black suit is accented with red ribbon trim on which conductive thread and sensors are sewn. When the fencer performs the four movements of a lunge maneuver in the correct order, the sensors glow green; if he steps out of order, the sensors turn red.
Several of the student projects in the exhibit have caught the attention of researchers and businesses. A local school for deaf children is interested in a stuffed bear that helps teach young children sign language. Starner is in talks with companies that are interested in software students have developed that enables 911 operators to communicate with deaf callers.
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