Wearable computer

Wearable computers, also known as wearables or body-borne computers, are small computing devices (nowadays usually electronic) that are worn under, with, or on top of clothing. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches. This article uses the broadest definition. Wearables may be for general use, in which case they are just a particularly small example of mobile computing. Alternatively they may be for specialized purposes such as fitness trackers. They may incorporate special sensors such as accelerometers, thermometer and heart rate monitors, or novel user interfaces such as Google Glass, an optical head-mounted display controlled by gestures. It may be that specialized wearables will evolve into general all-in-one devices, as happened with the convergence of PDAs and mobile phones into smartphones. Wearables are typically worn on the wrist (e.g. fitness trackers), hung from the neck (like a necklace), strapped to the arm or leg (smartphones when exercising), or on the head (as glasses or a helmet), though some have been located elsewhere (e.g. on a finger or in a shoe). Devices carried in a pocket or bag – such as smartphones and before them pocket calculators and PDAs, may or may not be regarded as 'worn'. Wearable computers have various technical issues common to other mobile computing, such as batteries, heat dissipation, software architectures, wireless and personal area networks, and data management. Many wearable computers are active all the time, e.g. processing or recording data continuously.