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i*CATch: a scalable plug-n-play wearable computing framework for novices and children

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

There has been much recent work in wearable computing that is directed at democratization of the field, to make it more accessible to the general public and more easily used by the hobbyist user. As the field becomes more diversified, there has also been a shift away from the highly specialized functionality of earlier applications towards aesthetics, creativity, design and self-expression, as well as a push towards using wearable computing as an outreach tool to broaden interest and exposure in engineering and computing.
This paper presents the design and development of the i*CATch wearable computing framework, which was developed specifically for children and novices to the field. The i*CATch framework is based upon a bus-based architecture, and is more scalable than the current alternatives. It consists of a set of plug-and-play components, a construction platform with a standardized interface, and an easy-to-use hybrid text-graphical integrated development environment. We will also present results of the evaluation of the i*CATch framework in real teaching environments.

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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
April 2010
2690 pages
ISBN:9781605589299
DOI:10.1145/1753326
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 10 April 2010

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Author Tags

  1. computational textiles
  2. construction kits
  3. e-textiles
  4. electronic textiles
  5. i*catch
  6. smart textiles
  7. wearable computing

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  • (2024)Jacdac: Service-Based Prototyping of Embedded SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36564058:PLDI(692-715)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
  • (2024)DanceBits 'It tells you to see us': Supporting Dance Practices with an Educational Computing KitProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633350(1-19)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
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