The Shopping Jacket: Wearable Computing for the Consumer

As part of the Bristol Wearable Computing Initiative we are exploring location sensing systems suitable for use with Wearable Computing. In this paper we present our findings, and in particular a wearable application - the 'Shopping Jacket' - which relies on a minimal infrastructure to be effective. We use two positioning devices, 'Pingers' and GPS. The Pinger is used to signal the presence of a shop, and to indicate the type of shop and it's website. The GPS is used to disambiguate which branch of a high street chain we are passing. The wearable uses this information to determine whether the wearer needs to be alerted that they are passing an interesting shop, or to direct the wearer around a shopping mall. The shopping jacket integrates a wearable CardPC; GPS and Pinger receivers; a near-field radio link; hand-held display; GSM data telephone; and a speech interface into a conventional sports blazer.