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ECHNICAL EPORT

DET NORSKE VERITAS

MOBILE WORKER: ICT SOLUTIONS FOR THE SURVEYOR

REPORT NO. 99-2043 REVISION NO. 01

DET NORSKE VERITAS

TECHNICAL REPORT

28 June 2000 , roffe/mobile worker ictsolutions_1999

Tel: Fax:

http://www.dnv.com

Date of first issue: Project No.:

2000.01.11 343 A 02 02 Approved by: Organisational unit:

Leif Buene, HoD DTP340 DTP343

Client: Client ref.:

DNV

Summary:

This report focuses on various commercially available and up coming IT devices that may support a ship surveyor in information access and recording. This report is supposed to give a quite comprehensive survey of existing information access and information recording technology. The actual computation unit (PC) has already been miniaturised to such a degree that it easily can be body worn. However, the challenge of determining the best possible (wrt. ergonomics and performance) input output devices remains. E.g. not all information has to be accessed via a screen but could easily be listened to via a mobile phone. Similar is true for visualisation where the nature of information determines whether a small handheld LCD screen is sufficient or whether a large vision headmounted display would be beneficial.

The report describes further the state of the art of voice recognition technology and experiences gained from implementing IBM's Via Voice. Satisfying speech to text conversion in real surroundings will not be expected until 5 or 10 years from now. A voice based recording system will require a trained and disciplined user. Speech recognition will sometimes fail or be insufficient (e.g. entering a sketch) then a backup system is required. Various solutions arediscussed.

In the next few years there will be a revolution in availability, usability and performance of body worn computing (also called wearables). Miniaturisation and introduction of Bluetooth technology (short range wireless connection) will enable seamless connection between various IT devices such as PC-unit, display, keyboard, camera, Wap etc. boosting the usability and ergonomy of wearables.

Report No.: Subject Group:

99-2043 Indexing terms Report title:

Mobile Worker: ICT solutions for the surveyor Mobile work Mobile phone Info access Info recording

Work carried out by:

Thomas Mestl Rolf Lindgren Sverre Gran

No distribution without permission from the Client or responsible organisational unit

Work verified by:

Arne Skeide Limited distribution within Det Norske Veritas (cancelled March 2000)

Date of this revision: Rev. No.: Number of pages:

2000-01-11 01 82 X Unrestricted distribution since March 2000

TECHNICAL REPORT DET NORSKE VERITAS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Reference to part of this report which may lead to misinterpretation is not permissible. Page i

Table of Content Page

1 CONCLUSIVE SUMMARY................................................................................................... 1

2 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 2

3 INSPECTION SUITCASE ...................................................................................................... 4

4 INFO ACCESS ........................................................................................................................ 5 4.1 Visual 5 4.2 Audible 7 4.2.1 Mobile Phones 7 4.2.2 Visual-verbal screen 7

5 INFO RECORDING ................................................................................................................ 8 5.1 Paper based 8 5.2 Screen Input 10 5.3 Digital Cameras 12 5.3.1 Handheld digital cameras 12 5.3.2 headmounted Cameras 15 5.3.3 Three-dimensional Camera 15 5.4 Voice Input 16 5.4.1 Dictaphone Olympus D1000 18 5.4.2 Voice recognition software 19 5.4.3 Nauticus by Voice 19

6 WEARABLE COMPUTER................................................................................................... 21 6.1 Application areas 21 6.2 Ergonomic considerations 22 6.3 Wireless by Bluetooth 23 6.4 Examples of Wearables 24

7 FIELD TESTS OF WEARABLES ........................................................................................ 26

8 THE FUTURE IN SHIPS INSPECTION SUPPORT............................................................ 29

9 REFERENCES....................................................................................................................... 32 Appendix A: Technology Outlook (SINTEF) 33 Appendix B: Fatigue Inspection Field Service ( Sverre Gran, DTP342) 66 Appendix C: Brief User Guide for the Nauticus Speech Demonstrator (Erik Nilsson, SINTEF) 72 Appendix D: User Guide for ELSurvey Prototype Software on a Wearable 75 Appendix E: Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Voice controlled Information

Platform applied in Ship Inspection (Diploma Thesis of T. Ø. Bjørkli) 82


1 CONCLUSIVE SUMMARY

Reference to part of this report which may lead to misinterpretation is not permissible. Page 1

1 CONCLUSIVE SUMMARY This report focuses on various commercially available and up coming IT devices that may support a ship surveyor in information access and recording. This report is supposed to give a quite comprehensive survey of existing information access and information recording technology. The actual computation unit (PC) has already been miniaturised to such a degree that it easily can be body worn. However, the challenge of determining the best possible (wrt. ergonomics and performance) input output devices remains. E.g. not all information has to be accessed via a screen but could easily be listened to via a mobile phone. Similar is true for visualisation where the nature of information determines whether a small handheld LCD screen is sufficient or whether a large vision headmounted display would be beneficial.

The report describes further the state of the art of voice recognition technology and experiences gained from implementing IBM's Via Voice. Satisfying speech to text conversion in real surroundings will not be expected until 5 or 10 years from now. A voice based recording system will require a trained and disciplined user. Speech recognition will sometimes fail or be insufficient (e.g. entering a sketch) then a backup system is required. Various solutions arediscussed.

In the next few years there will be a revolution in availability, usability and performance of body worn computing (also called wearables). Miniaturisation and introduction of Bluetooth technology (short range wireless connection) will enable seamless connection between various IT devices such as PC-unit, display, keyboard, camera, Wap etc. boosting the usability and ergonomy of wearables.

During this project a test cooperation with IBM was established where DNV is performing field test of a new prototype of wearables. A software for ships inspection was specially written to utilise maximally the potentials of a wearable. It allows to record data in form of text, sound and picture via a simple interface.

All information about a ship is stored in the Nauticus product model and can be accessed via e.g. Nauticus SiO. Nauticus SiO is however not designed for filed use where the user may have a low resolution display or even have only a mobile phone available. In our opinion such access limitations should be taken into consideration when designing the database. Hardware specific views should be defined that allows a surveyor to send a query to the database that then automatically returns the information in such a way that suits the used IT device. We also believe that small task specific software will be written that will stand for much of the information collection. Standardised import / export features in Nauticus' will have to be made (cf. ongoing standardisation work with SETP).


2 INTRODUCTION


2 INTRODUCTION The pace in miniaturisation of electronic devices and network technology is still accelerating and any limitations are not yet visible. Recently, arguments are putted forward that "Moore's Law", i.e. the continuation of the feature-size scaling, can continue for at least 15 years due to new developments of new materials, processes, and device structures1. Gathering, storing, processing, packaging and distributing information (i.e. knowledge) is the core of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and therefore one of the primary attention areas for DNV. Development within ICT will lead to that future IT work will increasingly be done when out of office by very small body worn machines, usually called wearable computers. The human-machine interaction will happen via new channels such as video, voice commands and automatic language interpretation. Consequently enterprises must anticipate growing remote access requirements, and plan to modify their business processes accordingly. IT budgets must also be adapted to exploit these new work paradigms and IT planners should include much more the end-user into the design processes of remote work solutions. Enterprises that fail to address the evolution of these technologies will lag behind competitors, will incur higher-than-necessary costs but most of all they will end up with reduced user and customer satisfaction (Girard & Smith, 1999).

The aim of the Mobile Worker project is therefore to identify business areas where mobile IT solutions may give added value to DNV and/or it employees, investigate what kind of IT solutions would be most suited and even do some testing to confirm our findings. The scope of the project is therefore to examine the

• latent potential of various IT tools (software & hardware), • required organisational change (mobility vs. stationary), •• required changes in work processes (internally and with customer).

In 1999 the project has primary focused on the situation of ships surveyors. The reason for this choice lies in the fact that the entire data collection process under a survey has remained unchanged during the years. Surveyors do almost exclusively use just paper and pencil for recordings. As a consequence double work has to be done when entering the findings in the Nauticus database, in addition this process contains the latent danger of entering errors. If this double work could be avoided not only precious time could be freed but also the general dissatisfaction among surveyors of doing the same thing twice could be removed.

We believe that a mixture of stationary, semi-mobile and mobile IT equipment will be required to gain fully effectivisation. Stationary equipment will still be necessary when doing heavy simulations. Semi-mobile devices such as Laptop computers are preferred in many circumstances (e.g. on travel, in meetings). They are called semi-mobile since they are still too heavy, obstructive and fragile to be taken on an inspection tour. In contrast, a wearable or handheld computer has nowadays reached the size of a Walkman and can therefore be classified as real mobile machines.

We are completely conscious about the fact that an oil tanker, on a bulk ship represents a harsh environment where any fragile equipment can and therefore will be broken sooner or later. A traditional digital camera or a handheld IT device that would work very well under a safety inspection will quite probably not survive a greasy oil tank. However, just as there are cars for traditional driving there are cars specially made for racing or for driving in rough terrain. They have even made vehicles, called tanks, which can endure the worst treatment thinkable including grenade fire. Our argument is that some IT devices are more useful for certain surveys than others. Rejecting god solutions just because they are not usable under all conditions for all kinds of surveys is a bad tactic or even a sign of being intellectually challenged. Most probably there will be an array of available devices from which the surveyor can chose that fits him and the coming situations best. Figure 1 gives a schematic of the assumed situation.

1 http://w3.digi.no/digi98.nsf/pub/dd19991123102200er6297703517


2 INTRODUCTION


Figure 1: The interplay between stationary, semi-mobile and mobile equipment may result in an increased effectiveness. Currently surveyors have been equipped with mobile phones and laptop computers but no real wearables. Data recording on the actual inspection is still done with same equipment as in the last decades: by paper and pencil. It is believed that some form of mobile equipment may drastically shorten this recording time.

Ambient Conditions Many of DNV's auditors and consultants do their work in similar environment as in their home office where usually access to Internet and telephone connection is available. This is in contrast to surveyors who confront quite different surroundings when onboard a ship. Usual office equipment is seldom available. These inspections occur either in the dry docks, in the harbour, or on sea voyages.

Safety equipment surveys may be considered as a rather clean job. A large part of it consists of recording date of last test of life boats, number of life jackets, evacuation signs ect. The recordings are done with help of a printed checklist where survey items are ticked off and numerical values are entered (90 % of available check lists are dedicated to machinery and safety, whereas the rest covers hull inspection).

Hull surveys are carried out in uncomfortable environments: temperature range -10-+50 C, 100% humidity, explosive gas, water, oil and grease, confined space and mechanical wear and tear. Hull surveys can include inspections of oil or gas tanks where special caution is required. Likewise the inspection of ballast tanks by using rafts represent extreme conditions.

Machinery surveys are done in very noisy surroundings. Often there is grease and oil present.

Renewal surveys, at five years interval, require that the ship is in dry dock and cover the whole ship.

New building surveys focus on the as-built situation and how this coincides with specified plans. The correct ID number and supplier of ships equipment is verified.

Our working hypothesis is that equipping surveyors with different IT devices that supports their information processing and communication may increase their efficiency, reliability and quality of work. It may also provide the impression of DNV as a professional high technological company.


3 INSPECTION SUITCASE


The miniaturisation and effectivisation of information technology in form of new computer hardware, smart mobile phones, digital cameras, speech recognition and wireless networks are in a tremendous progress. To be able to get quickly access to this new field of technology and to obtain indications of what the current trend is we have ordered SINTEF to make a technological overview of this theme. Five reports were made during 1999 and can be found in Appendix A.

3 INSPECTION SUITCASE

The firs attempt to support the surveyor was by providing a suitcase containing a variety of equipment. In short it contained:

• A Toshiba Portegé laptop

• A colour printer

• A digital camera (Canon Powershot A5)

• A modem

In addition a CrossPAD and an O2-meter was provided. One suitcase was sent down to DNV Singapore station for testing.

SCP (smart cellular phone) with anotepad interface

Surveyor suitcase

Scanner

Laptop (central computationunit)

Printer

Central communication unit

Digital camera

Earphone & microphone(wireless)

Figure 2: The surveyor suitcase. The solution to the left was based on a brainstorming meeting with a couple of experienced surveyors. The picture to the right shows the solution offered by SYSTEM SENTERET AS.

For more detailed information about this attempt and an evaluation of it see DNV report (Mestl & Lindgren 1999).

Printer

Mobile phone & Internet connection

Toshiba Portègè 7010CT

Personal O2detector

Dig. Camera(below)


4 INFO ACCESS


4 INFO ACCESS

In many situations the surveyor might wish to recall some earlier recorded information. At present this is only possible if he either has taken with some paper based printouts and notes to if he is able co call up some colleague with the mobile phone. However, in many circumstances no info can be accessed and he must entirely rely on his experience. In the future a variety of electronic aids currently under development will be available. They will allow visual and audio access to information.

4.1 Visual A visual interface is by far the most wide spread way of information access. The reason for it lies in the fact that the human brain is much more tuned inn in this sense mode. Blind or vision-impaired people will however develop a quite astonishing sensitivity to the other senses and especially hearing. Nevertheless visual information transfer has a much higher bit rate then just listening and consequently a lot of attention has been directed towards the development of visual hardware interfaces such as displays.

LCD screens are cheaply available with full colour, back lighted and a high resolution. In principle it can be distinguished between two types of displays

• handheld display

• headmounted display

Handheld displays are already widespread in use. They are found in mobile phones and all kinds of PDA's. They have several advantages such as that information can be shared to other peoples standing around and that the PDA can be stored away when not in use.

The major shortcoming is that they are not handsfree in use (when looking apart from some fixations allowing handsfree, see Figure 3) and may therefore be exposed to greasy gloves ect.

Figure 3: A belt mounted display allowing handsfree application (Perkins engineering2).

Figure 4: Examples of handheld displays. From left: Ericsson Pocket E-mail Reader3, the Palm Pilot4, the QualComm web communicator5 incorporating the palm Pilot and the DataRover6.

2 http://perkinsengineering.com/index.htm 3 http://www.kopin.com 4 http://www.palmpilot.com 5 http://www.qualcomm.com/phones/products/pdq_phone/0,1352,,00.html


4 INFO ACCESS


On the other hand headmounted displays (HMD) provide a visual output that can be used without involving the hands. Furthermore, in the future it will be possible to align the HMD output with that of the real world and provide computer augmentation of reality.

Even without the augmented reality aspects of a HMD, they are visual output devices of reasonable resolution, large angle of view, they are always accessible and they can be totally private. The resolution is usually VGA quality with grey scale but SVGA and colour are coming soon.

Problems associated with HMDs are ergonomic and but also their capabilities. The ergonomic problems are headed by the resistance of some users to wearing such an ungainly device. This problem may disappear over time or may be alleviated if the user is performing an important task. In this case, the wearing of a HMD may be seen as an emblem of importance. Other ergonomic problems are the weight, comfort, glare and safety aspects of the devices. Some devices are not effective in bright sunlight.

Currently VGA quality HMDs may cost $3000 or more.

HMD are mounted on carriers that are usually worn on the head such as spectacles, safety goggles, hard - or regular hat or some other kind of fixation equipment (straps). One of their main advantages is that they are handsfree to use.

Figure 5: Left: ClipOn prototyp from MicroOptical7 with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixel and 16-bit colour. Price ca. $1,500 (June 1999). Right: The WetPC prototype developed by WetPC Pty Ltd8 with special emphasis on under water usage.

Figure 6: Left: M1 Personal Viewer9 from TekGear with VGA quality (320 x 240 pixel) grey scale display for approx. 500$. Right: Seattle Sight Systems10 with their display especially designed to be an unobtrusive display for a military or industrial helmet. The optical head is mounted on a prehensile removable arm and it can be adjusted for the user's eye (Resolution 640 x 480 pixels, grey scale). 6 http://www.datarover.com 7 http://www.microopticalcorp.com/index.htm 8 http://www.wetpc.com.au 9 http://www.tekgear.ca/displays/hh_index.html 10 http://www.seattlesight.com/sss.html


4 INFO ACCESS


4.2 Audible Accessing information via earmuffs or mobile phones may be an alternative way that might proof advantageous in certain situations. Since personal safety is mostly dependent on visual attention on the surroundings a headmounted or handheld displays may be only used when standing still. This is in contrast to audible information. It can be listened to e.g. instructions for surveyors or hints & tips for the next item to be inspected even when going around on board (walk-man principle).

The type, amount and complexity of information that can be presented will however have to have a different ‘make up’ when presented visually. Obviously pictures and drawings can not be mediated audibly.

Research in human perception indicates that in certain, complex situations working memory capacity can be "increased" by using two senses rather than one. These findings suggest that when designing user interfaces emphasis should put on combining visual and verbal (auditory) information since this can lead to enhanced comprehension (Tindall-Ford et.al. 1997).

When words are spoken, the content should be simple, and the speed of narration should be about 160 words per minute. The narration should be slowed when used to introduce new ideas or concepts (Williams 1998).

4.2.1 Mobile Phones Mobile phones offer a familiar audible interface. Almost all surveyors have already a mobile phone when on inspection. With coming of the new WAP phones access to the WWW is now also possible. The web sites that can be visited successfully must however be designed especially for low resolution displays and audible interface, i.e. no graphic, little text etc.

Figure 7: On the left the Nokia Wap phone11 and the Nokia 9000i Communicator12 (right).

In the Mobile Worker project an example of telephone based Fatigue Inspection Field Service was developed. For a detailed description see Appendix B.

4.2.2 Visual-verbal screen As mentioned above information may successfully be mediated by vision as well as by sounds. The audible information can either be pre generated by a speech synthesiser and then stored as a *.wav file (see Figure 8: Euler). The inspection software would simply play back the file. Another more flexible possibility is to use a text-to-speech generator that takes raw ASCII text and converts it into a sound output (see Figure 8: Instruction_man). There are a lot of quality freely available multilingual synthesisers that can be downloaded from the web13. These text-to-speech conversion programs have already a reasonable high voice quality.

11 http://www.nokia.com/phones/7110/index.html 12 http://www.nokia9000.com 13 http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola.html


5 INFO RECORDING


Instruction_man.wav Euler.wav

Figure 8: Left: example of a text-to-speech converter from Lucent Technologies14. Right: example of a speech synthesiser from EMBrola13 (quote from Leonhard Euler, 1716). The above Instruction_man.wav file gives hints & tips and scope of work to a surveyor. He could therefore hear what to do when going to the next item to be inspected.

5 INFO RECORDING The primary task of a ship surveyor is to detect defects that may represent hazard to the people, ship or environment. These findings will have to be recorded.

5.1 Paper based Paper based information collection is the current state in ship surveys. A number of adaptations of this technique are imaginable. It may have the advantage that the surveyors are not forced to change their habit too much. The checklists are currently printed out as a word file on paper with is taken along the inspection. Conditions and actions are marked on it and the back of the paper may serve as space for comments and sketches.

A first approach would be to scan inn the paper and an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software could read the recordings and convert it into digital information. This however requires that a lot of after work (scanning, proof reading, cut & past) has to be done back at the office.

CrossPad If a paper based information collection is required the so-called CrossPad15 may be worth considering. A CrossPad is a portable digital notepad letting you take notes anytime, anywhere on a standard sheet of paper. The speciality of the CrossPad while notes and sketches are scribbled down in the traditional form, i.e. on paper with a ballpen, the CrossPad captures them in digital form. The pencil contains a small transmitter that sends a position signal whenever the pencil tip touches the pad. The pad can capture over 50 pages of your hand-written notes instantly and stores them for transfer to your PC via serial cable.

The digital notes can be saved in various picture formats. Usual cut & past can be applied and selected parts of the notes can directly be pasted into a Word document. The CrossPad comes along with character recognition software that translates the hand-written

notes into edible text. The recognition software can learn your handwriting.

14 http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/voices.html 15 http://www.cross-pcg.com


5 INFO RECORDING


During this project 2 CrossPads were bought from the UK16. The price is approx. 280£ for an A4 sized pad. The idea was that the standard paper based checklist could be fill out by the surveyors in the usual way but the CrossPad could provide a digital version at the same time. Downloadable SDK tools would allow the necessary adaptation of the set-up.

Unfortunately the CrossPad’s weight is about 2.2 pounds and its size is 21cm x 28cm making it rather awkward to carry it around on board. One of the CrossPads bought by the project is actively used in the newbuilding approval department where technical drawings are commented and annotated.

C-Pen 200 An interesting accessory could be the C-Pen17. The C-Pen is actually a PDA that can scan, write and display text. It holds usual text files and addresses.

It works like a highlighter that can capture selected information in digital form. As the user moves the C Pen 200 over the text, the in-built digital video camera takes pictures and then transforms this information into computer readable text via an OCR system. The scanned text is displayed on a large display and can be edited, stored in separate files and transferred to a PC via the built-in infrared interface (as long as the PC supports IR, not WinNT). The reading speed is 15 cm/s and it can hold 2MB of text (ca. 100 pages).

The price is approx. 180£.

There are several versions of the C-pen. A different model can translate between 5 major languages (English, French, German, Spanish and Swedish).

Now additional software is available that also allows IR transfer to your mobile phone as long as it has an IR eye (various Ericsson and Nokia phones). The C-Pen can therefore send Fax, SMS and email via SMS.

It may also be used as a simple bar-code reader.

Conclusion: A smaller version of a CrossPAD will be very promising. The fact that this equipment will not disturb the traditional way of recording might make it easier to introduce new technology to often-conservative people. The development of the CrossPAD family should therefore be followed carefully in the future and be tested when e.g. Filofax size versions become available.

The C-Pen scanning device may be an interesting supplement to usual PDA’s. It might proof very handy when facing signs or text in Russian or other non-familiar languages when inspecting foreign vessels.

16 http://www.technomatic.co.uk. 17 http://www.cpen.com/product/index.shtml


5 INFO RECORDING


5.2 Screen Input Flat panel displays are relatively cheap and available in full colour. In addition the screen is sharable if there are multiple people who wish to look at a display at the same time. On the other hand, they are usually not handsfree and require a storage pocket when not being held.

In many situations it is however necessary to annotate e.g. a picture or make some sketches. The ambient conditions may also be such that a hand-held device is usable. Input via the screen requires touch sensitivity of the LCD display or some other positioning indication pen (e.g. by radio signals as the CrossPad).

Figure 9: Left: touchscreen WebPAD (prototype) from Cyrix18. Right: portable hand-held pen-based computer from Dauphin19

The WebPAD from Cyrix18 is a typical example of a member of the family of webPAD’s. It is a single-application device, making it more convenient for Internet users to send or receive e-mail, chat, or browse Web sites instantly. It has a touchscreen interface and communicates wireless (radio frequency) to the Internet via a base station. The size is 8-by-11 inch, 2.7 pound and a high-resolution touch sensitive LCD screen. A stylus enables the users to navigate the Web.

The portable hand-held computers from Dauphin19 may be another alternative to collect data. The hand-held PC shown in Figure 9 is a functioning PC (266 MHz MMX Pentium, RAM 128 MB, OS: Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, Touch Screen on TFT LCD, 800 x 600, 8.4", 6.5 GB hard disk). If the environment is not too harsh such that the PC does not have to be handled with dirty gloves this solution might be very promising.

The Palm Vx20 organiser is currently one of the most popular hand-helds with an memory of up to 8MB. It can handle add-on applications, contacts, appointments, to-do's, e-mail, and memos. Its LCD display

has high clarity and its lithium-ion batteries recharge in minutes-and supply up to a month of power. Developers SDK are available such that the PalmPilot can be programmed.

Its small size, weight and colour (or s/w) LCD interface size is well suited for inspection recording. After colour and back lighted displays version come out they may be usable even in dark environments. The Pilot can only hold text, other recordings such as pictures or sounds must still be recording using an additional device. The input occurs via a touch sensitive LCD and a pen.

18 http://www.cyrix.com/html/emerging/index.htm 19 http://www.dauphintech.com/orasis.html 20 http://www.palm.com


5 INFO RECORDING


Similar the Mobilon Tripad21 (TriPad PV-6000) from Sharp. It has

• VGA (640 x 480) touch screen

• 12 hr battery life

• 16 MB memory (extendable)

• voice recording

• Microsoft® Windows® CE,

• Weight: 1.5 Kg

• 999 US$

Sharp Digital Camera Card22 (CE-AG04) is not compatible with the Tripad PV-6000.

The ToughPad and Hummingbird from the Phoenix Group23 is a rugged portable computer. The Hummingbird (available in 2000) is waterproof and allows for attachment of various accessories such as miniaturised keyboard, headmounted display etc. The ToughPad is specifically designed for applications requiring operation under the most demanding environmental conditions. This

waterproof unit has a touch screen with a resolution of up to 1024 x 768 pixel. It can operate in the temperature range of -32 C to +60 C, tolerates relative humidity of 5% to 95% and is not impaired by Sand & Dust blowing @ 40 MPH. Further, exposure to salt fog causes no degradation. But most important it is resistant to Oil, Gas, Diesel Fuel.

For more examples on screen input devices see Appendix A, chapter 1.2ff.

Conclusion: Hand-held PDA's will definitely be relevant in mobile work even in harsh environments such as on a ship. The Dauphin PDA and the ToughPasd are actually comparable with a full-size desktop computers. The development so far has gone more and more towards smaller and more powerful PC. In the future the desktop computer will actually have the same size of such small handhelds only differing by a larger screen and keyboard. Info recording by a handheld will certainly be possible at least for inspections where handsfree is not strictly necessary. The current distinction between PDA's and Wearables will diminish with spreading of Bluetooth technology (short range wireless info exchange). A PDA may then become (temporary) a wearable when being in the range of a e.g. headmounted display.

The development within hand-held PDA's has just begun.

21 http://www.sharp-usa.com/main.asp?sect=3&pageid=AEDAF 22 http://store.mobilescape.com/800.852.7877/hardware/wince/SEC-HC4600.asp?pfid=SEC-HC4600&dept_id 23 http://ivpgi.com


5 INFO RECORDING


5.3 Digital Cameras This section lists some digital cameras that could be used in connection with ships inspection. In many inspections picture documentation is desirable. Currently, the usual situation is that conventional film based cameras are applied. They have the disadvantages that the film has to be developed first. This could of course be avoided by using e.g. a Polaroid camera. However, inspection reports and other documentation are nowadays required to be electronic available hence paper based pictures have to be scanned. The traditional cameras giving paper pictures will be replaced by digital cameras that not only provide the pictures in digital form but often also allows one to immediately evaluate the quality of the picture taken and in case discard it on the spot.

From the large number of available digital cameras on the marked we chose just a view that looked relevant to us. This selection was done based on the experience from the Canon PowerShot A5. The main feedback from the users of this camera was that audio annotation of about 10-15 sec. is desired. The argument was that when taking many similar pictures, i.e. gear or stiffeners, one get easily confused why this picture was taken and where it belongs to.

Beside this desired option other requirements on a digital camera are: • Water or splash proof, • shock resistant, • easy to handle (e.g. number of menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus), • large buttons etc.

Unfortunately, the cameras are not designed for rough industry usage where people often wear greasy working gloves. In general • The integrated flashlights are in general too bad, they are only designed for close range. • The LCD display on the back is usually hardly visible in sunlight. The prices vary with time and dealer. Test results performed by others, e.g. ZDNet, can be found at: http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2376144,00.html?chkpt=zdhpproduct01

5.3.1 Handheld digital cameras Handheld cameras are and will stay for the nearest future the dominating camera type. Its advantageous lie in the fact that there is a large marked for such cameras making them relatively cheap and (often too) sophisticated. The drawback is of course that one usually has to remove any gloves in order to be able to handle them. They are further usually not watertight and may take damage when trying to clean them after visiting an oil tank.

Canon PowerShot A524 (TESTED) • 810.000 pixels resolution (1,024 x 768 pixel) • 8MB removable flash card (up to 236 pictures) • Autofocus 35mm (f/2.5) lens • Macro as close as 9 cm • Choice between 3 different power supply (Battery, Akku, cable) • Price: 4.000 NOK God: Very small and light and easy to handle. Few buttons (3) due to wheel. Flash only for short range. Picture quality very god. Transmission of pictures best via flash card (need PCMCIA adapter).

24 http://194.248.71.3/Canon/NAVIGALLE.NSF/digitale?Openview

http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2376144,00.html?chkpt=zdhpproduct01


5 INFO RECORDING


Bad: PCMCIA adapter and corresponding slot in PC needed (transmission via serial cable too slow). Windows NT does not support Pugg&Play , i.e. restart of PC necessary when inserting PCMCIA card. No voice annotation or date stamp on picture.

Canon PowerShotA5 Zoom: Same specification and appearance as PowerShot A5. • Optical zoom: 28-70mm • Price: 4.800 Evaluation same as Canon PowerShot A5. Agfa ePhoto CL50 25(TESTED) • 1.9 Mill pixels resolution (1600 x 1200) • 8MB removable flash card (12-96 pictures) • Auto focus, 3x optical zooming (38 – 114 mm) and 2x digital

zooming. • annotation of each picture (10 sec) with voice • immediately control whether to keep or erase a photo after

capturing it • 360-degree panoramic shots with PhotoWise® software • LCD, pictures stored in JPEG format. • Weight 300g. Camera control via PC possible. • Price: ca. 7.500 NOK negotiable God: Very god resolution. Power save mode by using sun light to show pictures on the LCD (little relevant for indoor inspections.). Picture transmission via 3.5” diskette adapter possible (god for Windows Nt!). Picture annotation by voice possible.

Bad: Need dexterity, i.e. too many buttons (12) and too many steps (ca 7 steps to delete a picture). Voice annotation only 10 sec. Battery life time relatively short. Size ca 30 % larger then Canon Powershot A5 and is on the limit of a pocket camera.

Kodak DC240 26 • 1,3 Mill pixel resolution (1280 x 960) • 8 MB flash card included (21 to 56 pictures) • Auto focus, 3x optical zooming (39 mm to 117 mm) and 2x digital

zooming • annotation of each picture (10 sec) with voice • LCD, pictures stored in JPEG format. Weight 330g. • Time and date stamp • Flash range = 3m • 7.800 NOK (Street price (123data) 5700 KNOK ex/mva)

25 http://www.agfa.no/dtp/dtpprodguide.html 26 http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/cameras/DCSGateway.jhtml


5 INFO RECORDING


Colour Digital Camera Card27 Flash card camera in connection with Sharp Mobilon HC-4500/4600 (ONLY)

• 2 optical (37mm to 74mm) and 2 digital zoom • 640 x 460 (VGA) • view images right on the Mobilon display on the hand held PC • sketch into images via hh PC • Operating temp: 0° to 40° C, weight 80 g • Price camera: 900$

The Mobile Worker project has bought such a hand held with camera. The PDA can act also as a voice recorder even when closed. It is very easily used and we have plans to test it in the field in 2000.

VisualPhone VP-21028 The mobile videophone is the same size as any normal mobile phone, but it comes equipped with a small

built-in camera and a two-inch colour LCD screen.

Along with the audio signal, the VP-210 transmits and receives images in real time at a rate of about two frames per second. The VisualPhone also works as a camera. It will store up to 20 JPEG images.

The VP-210 can also send or receive e-mail messages containing images to personal computers or other devices through the Internet via e-mail services. The price is approx. 325 US$

Sony Mavica MVC-FD88 29(TESTED) • Resolution: 1.3 mill. Pixel (1280 x 960), JPEG format • Saves pictures on 3.5”standard diskettes (5-30 pictures) • Optical 8x and 2x digital zoom (40-400mm), makro range: 3 cm • Voice annotation • Video function (60 sec with video and audio recording, MPEG

format) • Price: ca. 800 $

God: Easy down loading of pictures via diskette, recommendable when taking few pictures that are needed immediately. Video clip recording possible. Close up with zoom. Bad: Relative large (twice of Canon PowerShot A5, but light weight). Too many menues. No high resolution. Need stand when using 10 x zoom. No immediate delete function (have to go through menues). Short life time of battery (1-1.5 hr).

27 http://store.mobilescape.com/800.852.7877/hardware/wince/SEC-HC4600.asp?pfid=SEC-HC4600&dept_id 28 http://www.cnn.com/TECH/ptech/9905/18/japan.phonetv/ 29http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/dimaging/browse_the_products/digital_mavica_camera/mavica_models/mvc_fd88/ind

ex.html


5 INFO RECORDING


5.3.2 Headmounted Cameras This type of cameras is usually placed on top of your PC in your office. They are quite small and have a resolution around 300x400 pxls. Their application range is mainly video conferencing (Netmeeting etc.). They have USB interface resulting in an up to 10 times faster transmission to the PC then serial interfaces. Examples of typical PC cameras are:

Intel PC camera 30 Kodak: Dvc325 Digital Internet Camera 31 XIRLINK VIDEO MEDIA C-it Mobile PC Camera - XVP710:32

Price: 160 US $. Resolution: 640x480 still images and 25-30 frames / sec. USB connection. Wide (up to 75º) tilt range movement

Resolution: 704 x 576 for still images. Price: 70 US$

5.3.3 Three-dimensional Camera

In November 1999 Metacreations and Minolta presented the first digital camera capable of taking 3-dimensioanl pictures33. The camera is called Minolta 3D 1500 and will be sold already in the end of 1999. It can take 3-dim. Images of small and medium sized objects (< 40 cm) but not large ones such as cars or ships. The principle is that a series of pictures are stitched automatically together by special software. The picture can be visualised by the plug-inn-module MetaStream fra Metacreations. It allows rotating and zooming in on the object by choice. A demonstration can be found on the Minolta home page34.

The 3D camera has a great potential especially in the capturing of pictures of damaged 3 dimensional parts such as bolts, vaults and other looser parts. Inspection by an remote expert would then not longer require a video link, a 3 D picture would be enough.

30 http://gigabuys.us.dell.com/store/prodspec.asp?Word_Phrase=camera&CategoryID=2999&Page=1&sku=669141 31 http://gigabuys.us.dell.com/store/prodspec.asp?Word_Phrase=camera&sku=158956 32 http://gigabuys.us.dell.com/store/prodspec.asp?Word_Phrase=camera&CategoryID=2999&Page=2&sku=995305 33 http://www.dinside.no/ds/owa/a.vis?id=6095 34 http://www.minolta.com/dp/3d1500/sample/index.html


5 INFO RECORDING


Figure 10: The picture series to the right shows the steps to a three dimensional picture: the 3-dim. camera (top) takes pictures from different angles that are stitched together with a special software (middle). The image is can be rotated and zoomed in with the MetaStream viewer (bottom).

Conclusion

Based on the experiences from the use of our own or loaned digital cameras none of the digital cameras are ideal for ships inspections either because of the small and often many buttons or because important features are missing such as picture annotations or easy menus. The Canon PowerShot can be recommended although it lacks picture annotations due to its simplicity and compactness.

The PC cameras from the previous sections were not tested by us (except for the IBM PC camera).

The development of 3-D cameras are interesting and may indicate the development of completely new ways of interactive documentation.

5.4 Voice Input Speech, if perfected, would be an intuitively appealing input modality. Its main advantage is that it allows hands free input that can be couched in a manner that is easy to learn and the user would be in control of the interaction. According to Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) research35 voice recognition has some severe negatives that can be divided into two categories:

• those intrinsic to speech

• those that are a function of our current speech recognition technology.

Conceptual problems

There are three conceptual problems with speech:

1. determining when an utterance is directed to the computer and when it is intended for a another human (or even another computer),

35 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/vuman/www/boeing/hci.html


5 INFO RECORDING


2. prompting users who need assistance to recall the appropriate responses in any particular situation, and

3. specifying a position in a two or three dimensional space.

There are two techniques for determining the target of a speaking user: "press to talk" or "bracket" words. Pushing a special button will activate the computer simplifying considerably the task of the speech recogniser but this negates the hands free advantage of speech. Bracketing is the use of special words such as "computer" to indicate the following utterance is directed at the computer. The use of bracket words is somewhat unnatural to users and, in any case takes some user training. That is, one solution removes the hands free advantage of speech and the other diminishes the easy to learn advantages.

The fact that speech is not good at specifying a position in a two dimensional space such as a map can be compensated by having multiple specialized input devices. A gesturing or pointing input device for position specification and speech for the remainder of the input. Changing modalities to accomplish a particular input task may not be that easy for users to learn.

Problems of current technology

The second category of problems in speech recognition is technology related but new solutions may be developed as the technology improves. According to the HCI experts at Carnegie Mellon University35 these are:

a) quality of recognition/feedback requirements

b) speed of recognition

c) grammatical incorrectness

d) speakers with various speech impediments

e) ambient noise

a) Quality of recognition The quality of commercially available speech recognisers is in general disappointingly low. Current speech systems operating in ideal circumstances have a recognition rate of about 95% (one error in twenty words). It depends strongly on the

• size of the vocabulary,

• acoustic characteristics of the environment and the microphone,

• quality of the recognition algorithms.

Words and sounds that are acoustically very close to each other are difficult to recognise. Words that begin with soft sounds such as e.g. m are more difficult to recognise than words beginning with hard sounds. As a consequence to increase the success rate a vocabulary containing easily recognisable and acoustically distinct words should be chosen. Due to errors in recognition a feedback mechanism must be provided. This can either be audible or visual (hearing the word or seen the text). A correction feature for either correcting the error or as an alternative back up input must exist. This could either be speech again or a keyboard. If the recogniser makes too many errors requiring a lot of correction work the user will quickly become frustrated and the voice based input abandoned.

b) Speed of recognition

The speed of recognition is mainly dependent on the processor frequency. A high frequency will give a quicker recognition - but unfortunately also an increased power usage. An alternative is to do the recognising in idle times or back at the office (as is the case in the Olympus Dictaphone, see section 5.4.1).


5 INFO RECORDING


c) Grammatical incorrectness Speech recognition systems are not very tolerant against incorrect grammar, "uhs", interjections and incomplete sentences. The users must therefore be trained to speak in a fairly constrained fashion with the danger that info recording by speech recognition may be conceived as negative.

d) Foreign tongue and speech impediments

The best recognition system available, the human brain, may already have difficulties when listening to foreigners speaking not their mother tongue (ref. Pidgin English). In additions a user may suffer from stuttering, or a mask may distort the speech making an automated recognition almost impossible.

e) Ambient noise Noise from machines or wind degrade speech recognition systems. A noise level of 10 dB is in general already leading to an almost complete malfunctioning of the system. There exists filtering techniques (software as well as hardware) and noise suppression microphones but the results of speech recogniser is not satisfactory at all.

5.4.1 Dictaphone Olympus D1000 Findings could be described and recorded via a Dictaphone. In an earlier project analogue Dictaphones were introduced to surveyors. It was a complete disaster. Only one the 15 test subjects was able to draw benefit from it. It may be doubted whether newer Dictaphones alone would lead to other results. However, in some situations and for some persons this may indeed be the aid they might need.

The picture below shows the digital Olympus D1000 Dictaphone36. According to the producer it is possible to dictate 140 words/min. The machine allows

• indexing - automatic date time recording, automatic dictation numbering

• 2 recording times, Standard (15 min )and Long mode (33 min), which influence the length of the storage capacity when 2 MB of flash memory is available.

A special feature of the Olympus D1000 is that voice recorded in standard mode can be transcribed in editable text by the IBM voice recognition software ViaVoice. The recorded voice must for this task be transferred to the PC either by cable or by a flash card. ViaVoice Transcription uses

approx. 30,000 words in its basic vocabulary, extendable up to 64,000 words by the user. In addition, ViaVoice Transcription has a dictionary with approx. 320,000 words - back-up vocabulary that includes spell-checking and pronunciation

The short comings of the Dictaphone are that recordings that shall be transcribed to written text are only possible in quiet surroundings. Conference rooms, lectures, conversations or interviews are not suitable for direct conversion into text. This is a general weakness of voice recognition technology (see below).

It further requires that the user handles the machine correctly i.e. the microphone of the D1000 should be held about 5 cm away from the mouth and such that breathing noises is not recorded. Further, there are too many and too small buttons on the recorder. It is not intuitive to handle the recorder and especially when having gloves on.

Conclusion:

Using Dictaphones as the primary means of inspection recording will not be successful and is not recommended.

36 http://www.olympus-europa.com/voice_processing/index.htm


5 INFO RECORDING


5.4.2 Voice recognition software There is a variety of different speech recognition software commercially available. Their quality of performance is however comparable. A close investigation in this field was done by one of the Mobile Workers team member, Tor-Øyvind Bjørkli, in his diploma thesis in combination with his studies at the NTNU. For more detailed information about voice based information recording in ships inspection see his thesis found in the Appendix E.

5.4.3 Nauticus by Voice

A program (speech controller) has been written that uses IBM's ViaVoice speech recognition software to navigate, fill inn and enter comments in a Nauticus SiO like database. The plan was that the voice recognition software should directly interact with the real Nauticus SiO but unfortunately this could not been done. Using the ViaVoice SDK no change in the Nauticus code has to be done since the interaction happens via APIs. However many features in Nauticus are only available via a mouse and it was not clear what parts of Nauticus have APIs, further the no-disturbing-policy made it difficult to get necessary information. To avoid these problems a VB program was made that had the same interface as Nauticus (View Survey Plan), see Figure 11.

Figure 11: A screen dump of the Visual Basic program that imitates the interface of Nauticus SiO. Navigation in the tree structure, recording of the conclusions and entering memo text can be done using the ViaVoice speech recognition software.


5 INFO RECORDING


The advantage with this approach is that it is easy to achieve, allows demonstrating the dialog principles, and it requires little extra work to do the imitation. However no experiences were gained regarding the interaction with the real Nauticus SiO.

IBM's ViaVoice SDK is free available and downloadable on the net (in comparison to e.g. Leonard & Hauspie). It has a small set of COM/OLE objects with engine, UI, phrases, grammar UI controls etc.

The speech controller is independent of the underlying software (real Nauticus or Nauticus imitation) and interacts with it via GUIs. This means that in principle the speech controller could be drafted to the real Nauticus. The recognition is done by the ViaVoice runtime that is also downloadable freely.

Our speech controller was not trained to recognize the speaker individually, i.e. better performance can be expected when training the software. It distinguishes between three different modes: • Selection mode • Conclusion mode • Memo or dictation mode

In the selection mode the user can navigate in the survey-item tree either by saying the corresponding item name or by code words such as: next survey, this survey, previous survey, next item, this item etc. navigation by the code words works very well. This can however not be said when trying to use the items name. Uniqueness problems require sometimes that the whole item description has to be said.

The code word Conclusions allows switching to the conclusion mode where the findings can be recorded.

This mode works much better since the available vocabulary is quite small: Ok, found in order; Not Ok, not in order, Repaired, Not applicable, not inspected, do it tomorrow.

The command Select gets the system back to the selection mode in the navigation tree. In order to get to the memo mode the code word Add Memo has to be given. In the memo mode the user can dictate text freely. In addition there are some predefined code words such as: New line, Comma, full stop. To exit the memo mode either "Save memo" or "Cancel memo" has to be given.

The experiences drawn from this exercise can be summarized as follows:

• With small vocabulary speech recognition is satisfactory

• Free text dictation is a complete failure, the failure rate is very high and the recognition speed is quite slow.

• Entering complete sentences (with Full stop at the end) gives the best recognition.

• Structured speaking by the speaker is required, it is VERY annoying when not being understod correctly.

• The recognition software is very noise sensitive, not applicable for onboard use.

It can be concluded that considerable improvement in speech recognition software and microphone technology has to be made before it is practical usable. It might even be possible that a breakthrough in recognition will first happen when new microprocessor hardware architecture is developed (multiplexing & parallel processing). Currently the major challenge is the training of the users to speak in a structured and clear manner. According to sources at IBM and other experts within speech recognition reliable voice recognition may not be expected until 5-10 years from now.

For further description of the "Speech controlled Nauticus" see Appendix C.

Speech API Speech application

GUI


6 WEARABLE COMPUTER


6 WEARABLE COMPUTER

A Wearable Computer is a battery-powered computer system worn on the user's body (on a belt, backpack or vest). It is designed for mobile and predominantly hands-free operations, often incorporating head-mounted displays and speech input. Wearable computers are usually always on. The miniaturisation of the PC, HMD and battery pack will determine when wearables will encounter a break through. It is generally believed that a paradigm shift is occurring: from desktop computers towards wearable computers. The sizes of wearables are in the range of a cigarette package and the battery weight stands currently for approximately 70 % of the total weight of the wearable. Cables connection is still necessary but soon short range wireless connection technology will make them obsolete. In the not so far future IT equipment will be available with a size as small as a watch or even that of a pin-head but with a performance comparable with today's most powerful stationary computers37.

6.1 Application areas Little is has been published about organisations that experiment with wearable computers today. It is however known that BOEING, CARNAGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY (CMU), Daimler Benz, MIT and of course the military are experimenting with wearables in different application contexts. Boeing's experiments involve manufacturing and maintenance, CMU's involve maintenance and MIT's involve wearable assisted living.

CMU's experimenting involves military aircraft inspection38: This type of inspection requires crawling over all of the aircraft's skin, typically standing on a "cherry picker" but also attached via safety harness and standing on top of the aircraft. The primary input is speech, and the secondary input modality is a joystick providing general 2- dimensional input that was useful for positioning. Field evaluations for aircraft inspection at McClellan Air Force Base indicate not only approximately a 20 percent savings in inspection time but also a dramatically reduced inspection data entry time from hours to minutes.

Figure 12: Military and civil air craft inspection with wearable computers38.

37 Where a calculator like the ENIAC today is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future

may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh only 1 1/2 tons. ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949, p.25 38 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wearable/darpa/


6 WEARABLE COMPUTER


Figure 13: Left: a HMD display of a wearable computer in the US army39. Middle: Boeing-developed a Portable Maintenance Aid (PMA)40 software that enables maintenance personnel at an air plane gate quickly pinpointing to technical problems instead of searching through thousands of pages of manuals. Right: The insurance company on site estimates the damages41. Paperwork, time, and cost are reduced through this complete mobile solution.

Warfighters are already burdened with equipment, weapons and supplies. THE WEARABLE gives combatants the advantage of unparalleled computing power and stored data with a negligible increase in weight. Used to improve the situational awareness of mounted or dismounted troops, including the special forces, THE WEARABLE is the next advancement on the digitised battlefield. Troops can use global positioning satellite interfaces to provide themselves and their commanders with their precise locations, report critical data on threats, and keep in close contact with the chain of command to receive orders, make reports, and request supplies.

6.2 Ergonomic considerations From an user perspective, the highest priority will be to obtain a wearable system being less obtrusive (smaller and lighter weight) and that the input as well as output devices conform to the users normal working patterns. In the previous sections various Input and Output devices were already presented and discussed.

The degree of mobility required and the working position of the user (standing, moving, crawling and lying down) determine the body placement of the computer, see Figure 14. Further, safety issues may also lie constraints on the wearable configuration. HMDs may be designed differently or even avoided when safety goggles have to be used or when vision must not be impaired. If the wearable computers is embedded in the boiler suit then the size of the clothing becomes important otherwise it can't be used by multiple people. If the computer is attached on a jacket it may then be sharable with other users but this will mean there is another west to be put on by the e.g. ship inspector.

39 http://home.dwave.net/~fwpc/airapps.html 40 http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/1999/photorelease/photo_release_990610b.html 41 http://www.flexipc.com/Webpages/insurance.htm


6 WEARABLE COMPUTER


Figure 14: The figure to the left indicates where on the body things could be attached without being conceived as too obstructive. To the right a schematic picture42 of a typical Wearable with a headmounted display, ear and microphone, the system unit with battery pack and e.g. a track ball is attached to the belt.

Usability includes of course also the design of software that should utilise the potentials of such equipment. Since wearables are still in their infants it is not yet clear which way their development will take. Some argue that wearables will replace desktop computers and, hence, they would need to be suitable for any application. Others consider them as rather very task specific and using different devices for different tasks. In any case, much attention is directed towards the software interface design.

6.3 Wireless by Bluetooth Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard introduced by Ericsson, IBM, Nokia, Intel and Toshiba in May 199843. Bluetooth technology uses short-range radio signals to connect devices such as mobile phones, mobile computers and handheld devices. The Bluetooth Technology answers the need for short-range wireless connectivity within three areas:

• Data and Voice access points • Cable replacement • Ad hoc networking

Bluetooth specifies a system solution comprising of hardware, software and interoperability requirements. The Bluetooth radio operates in a globally available 2.4 Ghz ISM band and has a transmission rate of 1MB/sec. This technology will make it possible to connect any portable and stationary communication devices. These cordless connections are instant and they are maintained even when devices are not within line of sight. The range of each radio is approximately 10 meters, but it can be extended to around 100 meters with an optional amplifier.

A device equipped with a Bluetooth radio establishes instant connection to another Bluetooth radio as soon as it comes into range. This means that Wearables become much more user friendly as for instance text entered with a wristmounted keyboard is wireless transferred to the system unit being stored away in a coverall pocket. Further, at once the surveyor comes back to the captain's office all information on the wearable is immediately accessible from the laptop.

42 http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/mime/papers/edmedia97_demo_CD.html 43 http://www.bluetooth.com/default.asp


6 WEARABLE COMPUTER


Figure 15: The first ever handsfree accessory incorporating Bluetooth™ technology. A cellular phone headset that connects to a mobile phone by a radio link instead of a cable (Ericsson Bluetooth™ Headset) will be available on the market in mid 200044.

Bluetooth version 1.0 is already available (since 30. 7. 1999). Dataquest predicts that within the year 2002 about 79 percent of all pocket machines (PDA's, mobile phones, etc.) and more then 200 millions PC will be equipped with Bluetooth.

6.4 Examples of Wearables Today's wearable computer are still clumsy and full of connecting wires. Their performance lies generally below stationary PC - except in power consumption. In general a Wearable consists of the following components:

• Information access unit(s) - Display (headmounted, handheld) - Earphone

• Navigation & information recording unit(s) - Camera - Microphone - Keyboard - Touch screen - Mouse - Other sensors (temperature,

position, …) • Processor and storage unit • Connection unit(s) - Modem/telephone - RF - CD, disk drive - Network card • Battery pack

Figure 16: The wearable from Xybernaut45 with a wristmounted keyboard and a headmounted display. Alternatively a high resolution flat panel colour display could be used instead of the HMD and keyboard.

44 http://www.ericsson.com/pressroom/19991114-0001.html 45 http://www.xybernaut.com


6 WEARABLE COMPUTER


The wearable from Xybernaut may be the leading product in today's marked. The price for the Xybernaut with headmountd display or wristmounted LCD display lies in the range of 6.400 - 7.000 $. The technical data are: Pentium 233 MHz, 128MB Ram, harddrive 4.3 GB. The touch screen flat panel with built inn buttons has VGA colour quality with a resolution of 640 X 480 pixel. The headmounted has the same resolution and angle of view of 20° (h) and 15° (v). Microphone and ear-piece speaker can be integrated and a weight of 250g.

Figure 17: The wearable PC with helmet mounted display (grayscale, VGA quality) from ComSonics46 used in field work by telecom cable technitians.

The list of wearable vendors is currently quite small (ViA's wearable47 is another well known vendor). It is however known that a number of larger companies such as IBM48 and Toshiba are working on their prototype.

The size and integration of the wearables sub components are still too bulky and may be conceived as too obstructive. Further, the software on such wearables are still just copied from the standard stationary PC and not especially designed such that they utilise the potentials of wearables maximally.

46 http://www.headmountdisplay.com/index.html 47 http://www.flexipc.com/Webpages 48 http://www.ibm.com/news/ls/1998/09/jp_3.phtml


7 FIELD TESTS OF WEARABLES



DNV has signed a Confidentiality Agreement and a Test Agreement with IBM. The primary aim of this cooperation is the testing of Wearable Computer Technology (hardware and software) as well as determining and documenting effects of this technology (i.e. measures of effectiveness) 49.

A separate report will be filed describing in detail the test objectives, the tests and the results. It will however be not available without permission from DTP343. The Confidentiality Test Agreement regulates its restriction.

As mentioned in the beginning the primary motivation for introducing WCT is to remove double work by moving parts of the after work, especially the data entry, to the place where comments are made the first time, i.e. on board. Today's and tomorrow's data entry interface of Nauticus will still presuppose that data are recorded on paper. When replacing this paper link with a digital data entry then a lot of time could be saved. Such a data entry will require an interface that takes the ambient condition (dark, noisy, etc) , the surveyors outfit (goggles, gloves, etc) and the ways of working (parallel work rather then sequential) into consideration. The better the interface is designed the more people will use it and the more beneficial it will become.

We have made a prototype of a possible software that could be used on WCT, see Appendix D for a user guide.

ELSurvey.exe prototype Software

This software puts special emphasis on a number of features that have a general validity:

• Visual interface

• Navigation by keys (arrow, return and Tap key)

• Usable for low resolution screen

• Data entry by text, sound and picture

• Displays and asks only for necessary information

The software uses the same checklists as Nauticus SiO. Since it is just a prototype these checklist files are manually created by extracting the item number, item description, type of required input (Yes, No, Na, or Date, Number etc) and guidance notes from the Word documents generated by Nauticus. They are saved in a *.chk file and can be loaded in by the program.

When starting a new survey a folder is created named <vesselname-date> within the subfolder C:/Surveys. Multiple surveys can be done resulting in corresponding further subfolders in C:/Surveys.

The program also indicates by a yellow circled exclamation mark as long as some recordings still missing and with a red triangle, like Nauticus, when a condition was given. All additional recordings such as text, sounds or pictures are saved as files and just appear as symbols on the display, cf. Figure 18. These recordings are entered via a text editor, a sound recorder and a picture capturing program, cf. Figure 19.

49 http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1474374.html




Figure 18: The main screen of the field software ELSurvey. The upper part of the screen contains the checklist item ID, description, data entry columns (Condition & Activity) and comment column. Navigation is entirely based on arrow, return and tab keys. In the lower part of the screen the guidance notes for the item currently selected is shown.

Text entering could be done in a variety of ways:

• Keyboard, e.g. wristmounted • virtual keyboard on LCD screen • voice recognition software • scanner combined with OCR(optical character recognition)

The display may either be headmounted, i.e. small display attached to the helmet or glasses, wristmounted or handheld (stored away in a pocket when not in use). A b/w VGA quality resolution display would be enough.

The camera may either be headmounted or handheld. The required transmission cables make however a headmounted low resolution (400x600 pixels) version more attractive. Computer controlled digital cameras as described in Chapter 5.3 would be sufficient.




Figure 19: The program allows three different modes for recording information: text, sound and pictures.

For more detailed information see Appendix D.


8 THE FUTURE IN SHIPS INSPECTION SUPPORT


8 THE FUTURE IN SHIPS INSPECTION SUPPORT Currently a change in paradigm is going on from traditional stationary IT work with a desktop computer, a large keyboard and unlimited power supply towards highly mobile equipment that wireless interconnected. This trend is just a natural consequence of an ever-increasing degree of miniaturisation of CPU, as well as storage capacity. Storing data will soon utilise high density, 3-dimensional units without any moving parts (e.g. disk drives). Within 10 years the size of such hardware components will be so small that they can be embedded into clothes or wristwatches (Kurzweil, 1999). All the components will be connected cordless to each other as well as connected wireless to the LAN. The characteristics distinction between nowadays various mobile equipment (phone, computer, pager, walkman, etc) will converge towards a IT-device that can reprograms its hardware to the desired configuration50 (Agarwal, 1999).

The future digital display will have qualities of paper, high resolution, high contrast, large viewing angle and no flickering. Headmounted versions can be embedded into glasses or helmets and would project the image directly onto the retina without the use of any screen 51. Further most of future IT devices will be integrated into the hard hat or clothing. Due to their small sizes they could be well protected and even endure laundry.

Within ten years speech recognition may have improved to that level that it can understand people with very different pronunciation and may even be useable in very noisy environment. It is also believed that within this time real time translation is possible such that a surveyor could talk in Norwegian via a speech translator to a e.g. Russian crew member.

Although this technology would then be commercially available and well functioning it may still be too expensive.

A more probable development of the near future IT support for surveyors will be the utilisation of e.g. handheld Windows CE products as presented in section 5.2. This is mainly because of their small size, price and availability of such products. They might just be used to record data that are then transmitted (by IR or Bluetooth) either to a more powerful device such as a laptop computer or to a mobile phone for e-mailing to the home office for verification purposes. It is an expensive 'over kill' in equipment as well as support to provide surveyors with very powerful high-capacity machines just for printing out the Quick Report. It must be assumed that all equipment is exposed to very rough handling - also in the future - and that they are lost into the sea or broken otherwise. Hence any IT hardware should be as cheap and easily available as possible. Windows CE machines are relatively inexpensive and more or less available everywhere in the world. A further important argument in favour of e.g. WinCE machines is their start up time. When switching on a handheld it is immediately functioning which is in great contrast to the awfully long start-up routines by Windows 9* or NT. In addition, no special configuration should be required (cf. VerIT standard) since the primary task of these machines is data collection, their pre-processing and transmission via e-mail or wireless. Any task specific software, like the ELSurvey program in chapter 7, must easily be downloadable from some web site or server. Security aspects can thus be kept minimal since just plain 50 The Oxygen Project, http://www.cag.lcs.mit.edu/raw 51 http://www.mvis.com/html/technology.html




ASCII files, sound and/or picture (movie) files are transmitted that can easily be scanned for viruses by the recipient. Further all maintenance work for software updates can still be done centralised from the main system. The Mobile Worker project has purchased the Mobilon with PC-card camera (cf. chapter 6.3.). It is planned to convert the ELSurvey program from chapter 7 into a version running on Win CE. Field tests that shall give information about this concept will be done in course of year 2000.

The future of Nauticus will strongly determine and be determined by the performance of wearables and handhelds. The core of Nauticus, the product model, will in principal allow to hold any kind of information as long as it can be linked up to some entities in the model. For instance, to a small pump in the model a variety of other entities can be attached to, like the producer and alternative suppliers, potential repair shops grouped geographically, installation and maintenance instructions, a list of surveyors that that could be contacted that also have experiences about this item, etc.

The traditional tree structure will not necessarily be a preferable interface when trying to navigate in the product model because of its immense size. Views are defined that have direct links to pre-selected entities allowing a much faster access. It is imaginable that to each of this different views could be designed that are tailor-made for a variety of IT devices. For instance, a new building surveyor detects that an equipment, e.g. type number of a pump, does not coincide with the number given in his papers. To sanction the pump he has to find out whether the supplier and the specific type of pump is verified for use by DNV. A possible way to achieve this by establishing an automated telephone service where surveyors can call in and type in their request. This service would therefore be based on a specific view of the product model and on a specific interface.

Further, these views will have clearly defined I/O protocols such that small data sets can be down and uploaded to and from exterior applications. Nauticus will of course remain the main database / access interface but in addition a number of satellite applications running on wearables will appear.

Figure 20: The future Nauticus will have a huge product model as its core. By defining different views a sub set of this huge data base can be extracted and interfaces suitable for various IT devices can be tailor made.




Nauticus' product model containing the entire geometry of a vessel represents another great exploitation potential. Assume the surveyor wears a small electronic device that determines his position and that of any parts relative to the ship. Tedious counting of stiffener proned to many errors could then be obsolete. Developing such a ship internal positioning system is in principal feasible at least for larger compartments but it will nevertheless be a technical challenge, cf. (Mestl & Taranger, 1998).

Whenever introducing new equipment the current work processes may be subject to adaptation otherwise it may be not certain that anything is gained. Further, the human aspects of the end user, i.e. the surveyor, must be taken much more into consideration in the early design phase of any application that shall be used in the field. If he feels that a new hard- or software does not support him or that it is awkward and time consuming to use it will quickly be rejected. Further, anything that 'smells' control or restriction of his freedom will be worked actively against.


9 REFERENCES


9 REFERENCES

Agarwal, A. (1999). Raw Computation. Scientific American. August 1999.

Girard, J; Smith, C. 1999. The Remote Access Business Scenario: Key Issues for IT Planners. Gartner Group. 4. June 1999.

Kurzweil, R. (1999) Spiritual Machines: The Merging of Man and Machine. The Futurist, November 1999, p 16-21.

Mestl, T; Taranger, B. A. 1998. Ship Internal Positioning System (SiPoS), DNV Report 1998-2071.

Mestl, T; Lindgren, R. 1999. Mobile Worker: evaluation of the Inspection Suitcase. DNV Report 1999-2025

Tindall-Ford, S., Chandler, P. and Sweller, J. 1997. MULTIMEDIA AND WORKING MEMORY LIMITATIONS - When Two Sensory Modes are Better than One. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 3(4), p 257-287.

Williams, J. R. 1998. USING MULTIMEDIA IN INSTRUCTION - Guidelines for the Use of Multimedia in Instruction. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 42nd Annual Meeting, p 1447-1451


APPENDICES


APPENDIX A: TECHNOLOGY OUTLOOK (SINTEF)

NOTAT GJELDER

Wear-IT teknologiovervåkingsnotat #1, Periode: Uke 17-18, 1999

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Postadresse: 7465 Trondheim

Besøksadresse Trondheim:

O.S. Bragstads plass, Gløshaugen

Besøksadresse Oslo:

Forskningsveien 1

Telefon: 73 59 30 00

Telefaks: 73 59 43 02

ARKIVKODE GRADERING

Åpen ELEKTRONISK ARKIVKODE

Mobile Worker ICTsolutions_all_new

Thomas Mestl, DNV Kroppsdatagruppa, SINTEF

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PROSJEKTNR. DATO SAKSBEARBEIDER/FORFATTER ANTALL SIDER

4005 30.18 1999-05-10 Odd-Wiking Rahlff 85

Dette notatet beskriver løpende resultater av den teknologiovervåkingen på området forsknings-, utviklings-, og salgsfronten av kroppsbårne datasystemer som SINTEF utfører på fem områder for DNV i forbindelse med Wear-IT prosjektet. Resultatene er oppdelt i de fem fokusområdene samt et siste oppsamlingsområde for diverse annet som kan tenkes å ha relevans for prosjektet.

1 WEARABLE COMPUTERS ....................................................................................................... 34 1.1 Inroad Inquire - talekroppsbåren 34 1.2 Mentis for systemvedlikehold 34 1.3 Første Xybernaut brukerforum 35 2 HEADMOUNTED DISPLAYS ................................................................................................... 36 2.1 MicroOpticals briller klare 36 3 SMART MOBILE PHONES........................................................................................................ 36 3.1 Bluetooth modul fra Ericsson 36 3.2 MS Universal Plug and Play 36 3.3 Multimediamobiltelefoner 37 4 VOICE RECOGNITION .............................................................................................................. 38 4.1 Nordisk Spåkteknologi med vind i seilene 38 5 INPUT INTERFACES.................................................................................................................. 38 5.1 Internet Surfpad 38 5.2 Yepp MP3 spiller/diktafon 39 6 DIVERSE...................................................................................................................................... 39 6.1 Digitalkameraer 39 6.2 StrongARM med 600 MHz for PDA'er 39


APPENDICES


1 WEARABLE COMPUTERS DNV fokus: Alt som har med små kroppsbårne computere å gjøre, dvs. ikke så mye palmtops etc men ordentlige maskiner som har kapasitet og regnekraft til f.eks. talegjenkjenning.

1.1 Inroad Inquire - talekroppsbåren Firmaet Inroad i Seattle (http://www.inroad.com/index.html) produserer en kroppsbåren maskin, Inroad Inquire, for industrielt, mobilt feltarbeid med talestyring. Her er det altså gjort et valg om ingen skjerm! Programvaren er levert av SyVox Corp og heter SpeechNet og må kjøre tilsvarende på tjener for kommunikasjon. Bruksområdet er i første rekke tenkt i varehus. Prisen er ikke angitt.

( http://www.inroad.com/products/speech/datasheet.html)

1.2 Mentis for systemvedlikehold Firmaet Interactive Solutions i Florida (http://www.teltronics.com/is/) har inngått partnerskap med Siemens ElectroCom i Texas om at de skal levere sin Mentis kroppsbårne som basis for Siemens utvikling av systemet SIMON™ (System Integrated Maintenance Online) for å gjøre maskinvedlikehold lettere for reperatører via tegninger etc tilgjengelig i et lokalnett. Her er det Win98 i bunn.

http://www.inroad.com/index.html

http://www.inroad.com/products/speech/datasheet.html

http://www.inroad.com/index.html


APPENDICES


1.3 Første Xybernaut brukerforum [06.05.99] Mandag 24-25 mai arrangerer Xybernaut Corp. ( http://www.xybernaut.com/ ) sitt første brukerforum, First Annual Users Group Conference i Fairfax, Virginia. Her møtes industrielle brukere og utveksler erfaringer om sine anvendelser. Det vil sikkert kunne være inspirerende for DNV å være tilstede her.( SINTEF har som kjent en Xybernaut P133 som DNV kan få benytte dersom man må "være" eksisterende kunde for å kunne delta.)

Sakset fra Newswire:

"FAIRFAX, Va., May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Xybernaut Corporation (Nasdaq: XYBR), the leader in wearable computing, announced today that they will be hosting their first annual Xybernaut Users Group (XUG) on May 24th and May 25th at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, Virginia. The Xybernaut Users Group Conference offers current and prospective customers an exceptional opportunity to network with other business users and application developers, learning how others are profiting from wearable PCs in the marketplace. Speakers will include representatives from Lucent, ESRI, MIT, SUNY and a keynote address from former Virginia Governor George Allen. The topics will range from "Challenges on the Factory Floor" to "Infrastructure Inspection" "Wearable computers represent the next wave in business and personal computing, and Xybernaut is at the forefront of this emerging technology" explained Governor George Allen, former governor of Virginia. "Virginia is proud to be home to this innovative high-tech company, part of the growing number of companies, which has transformed Virginia into the 'Silicon Dominion'." "There are people in the field today, collecting critical, time sensitive data with mobile computers. This was not even possible just a year or two ago," said Jim Blaha, President and CEO of Datria Systems, Inc. "With hands free and eyes up, these mobile field workers are incorporating speech, laser range finders, GPS, and digital cameras with mobile computers to create a multi-media data collection environment. The Xybernaut Users Group will help to bring these people together with the creators of the technology they rely on daily to do the job. It's a great opportunity to network and do a little informal market research." Ed Newman, President and CEO, Xybernaut Corporation added, "This is a unique chance for us to learn from our customers and to give them an opportunity to register ideas for future development. The demand for this type of format was so high that, although we have had Users Group meetings in the past, this is the first time we decided to make it an annual event. Because the wearable community is so global and spread out, this kind of demand is a good indicator of the growth this industry is undergoing. The opportunities surrounding this technology are so vast, it really is a special occasion when so many are gathered together to not only discuss ideas but to shape the future."

http://www.xybernaut.com/


APPENDICES


2 HEADMOUNTED DISPLAYS DNV fokus: Skal kunne integreres i en hjelm og brukes kun når de trengs, dvs. det må kunne gå an å flippe dem vekk. Egenskaper som oppløsning og vekt.

2.1 MicroOpticals briller klare MicroOptical (http://www.microopticalcorp.com/ ) sine skjermbriller som er kjent via Thad Starner på MIT, og som har vært under utvikling i flere år er nå langt om lenge klare for kommersiell bruk! De kan leveres frittstående som brillemonterbar løsning (30 g, 12.000 kr) eller innebygget i eksempelvis vernebrille (100 g, 40.000 kr) med 1/4 VGA fargeskjerm som tar 12-15 grader av synsfeltet når den er aktiv.

(http://www.newspage.com/cgi-bin/pnp.GetStory?story=c0426018.1mp&topic=514&date=19990427&inIssue=TRUE&mode=topics)

(http://www.dinside.no/ds/owa/a.vis?id=3367, Aftenposten 24.04)

Teknologiavklaringsforslag: Det undersøkes om det er enkelt å kople den brillemonterte utgaven til standard port på pc. Dersom dette går bestilles ett eksemplar for HUD-uttesting og uttesting av aksept for inspektører..

3 SMART MOBILE PHONES DNV fokus: Mobiltelefoner og pc vil sammensmelte i de årene som kommer. Hva skjer på denne fronten mht. display, regnekraft, overføringskapasitet, lagringsplass, Bluetooth kommunikasjon med andre IT-gjenstander som f.eks. digitalkameraer?

3.1 Bluetooth modul fra Ericsson På CeBIT viste Ericsson som en av de få som overbeviste på dette området fram sitt generiske Bluetooth modul på 3x2x4cm. Bluetooth 1.0 spesifikasjonen ventes i juni, og applikasjoner som benytter det ventes neste år. Etter CeBIT var det imidlertid en del usikkerhet på hvor sterkt Bluetooth står.

(http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/14/ns-7776.html )

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/specials/1999/04/bluetooth/

3.2 MS Universal Plug and Play Her er et interessant nytt utspill fra om Microsofts versjon av trådløs plug&play, som konkurrent til Bluetooth og Sun's Jini:

( http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Apr99/UPnPmomPR.htm )

http://www.microopticalcorp.com/

http://www.newspage.com/cgi-bin/pnp.GetStory?story=c0426018.1mp&topic=514&date=19990427&inIssue=TRUE&mode=topics

http://www.newspage.com/cgi-bin/pnp.GetStory?story=c0426018.1mp&topic=514&date=19990427&inIssue=TRUE&mode=topics

http://www.dinside.no/ds/owa/a.vis?id=3367

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/14/ns-7776.html

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/specials/1999/04/bluetooth/

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Apr99/UPnPmomPR.htm


APPENDICES


Jeg sakset flg:

"Universal Plug and Play demonstrations at WinHEC will include a range of devices and systems, from a video camera used as a home surveillance monitor allowing real-time access to images from anywhere on the home network to hand-held devices that can discover and spontaneously communicate with printers in a new network via a wireless connection."

Phil Hester, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Personal Systems Group: "As pervasive computing becomes a reality, it is critical that PCs and intelligent consumer devices be able to dynamically communicate with one another and interoperate. A key factor in making these devices appealing to consumers is ensuring that device-to-device communication happens automatically, without the need for any configuration by the consumer. IBM believes in open standards, and we view Microsoft's proposal of Universal Plug and Play's Service Discovery Protocol, and support for the creation of a working group in the IETF, as a positive step toward addressing this auto-configuration problem."

3.3 Multimediamobiltelefoner Det dukker etterhvert opp flere konkurrenter til Nokia 9110 på området mobiltelefon+PDA+nettleser. Flere ble vist fram på CeBIT 99:

● Ericsson viste fram sin R380-modell som har innebygget modem, og stemmeopptaker bl.a. Den antas å komme på markedet neste år.

● Svenske Spectronic planlegger til høsten å lansere en modell, Spectronic Multimediatelefon, som har innebygget nettleser, kan ta bilder og overføre dem med tekst som epost eller fax.

( http://www.spectronic.se/ )

http://www.spectronic.se/


APPENDICES


4 VOICE RECOGNITION DNV fokus: Engelsk talegjenkjenning i støyende omgivelser, passende mikrofoner og øretelefoner. Talegjenkjenningen kan enten ligge på pcen eller i mobiltelefonen. Skal kunne styre pc/telefon (menyvalg, dialing) og til en viss grad fritekst-input.

4.1 Nordisk Spåkteknologi med vind i seilene Gründerne fra taleteknologifirmaet Nordisk Språkteknologi AS (NST) på Voss har reist 100 MNOK (http://www.nettavisen.no/it_nyheter/61327.html ) fra investorer.

NST har via sin utviklingssjef, datalingvisten Kolbjørn Heggstad, tidligere sagt at de vurderer DNV og skipsindustri som en svært interessant bruker i og med at de definerer sjøfart som et primærsatsingsområde. For engelsk taleruavhengig gjenkjenning kan derfor produktet Voice Xpress som kjører under minimum Win95/98 være en kandidat for Wear-IT. Produktet har spesialtilpasninger for vertikale områder såsom medisin, sikkerhet etc og hevdes å fungere også under støyende forhold.

( http://www.lhs.com/voicexpress/ )

Deres moderfirma Lernout & Hauspie, fikk forøvrig nylig 30 M$ investert fra Intel og dessuten fornyet tillit fra Microsoft som økte sin eierandel til 7%. L&H er dermed Microsofts største leverandør av taleteknologi. (http://www.lhs.com/news/releases/19990423_smbelgian.asp )

Teknologiavklaringsforslag: Voice Xpress anskaffes og innlesing av typisk DNV-inspeksjonsrapport testes ut med og uten støy.

5 INPUT INTERFACES DNV fokus: Siden skipsinspektørene har tykke, skitne hansker på seg og skal ha hendene mest mulige frie må det legges mest mulig vekt på en enkel, robust og helst handsfree interface. F.eks. hva finnes det av 'mus' (jfr. mindmouse), digitale sketchboards til å lage tegninger (jfr. Crosspad) og meget enkle digitale kameraer (helst vanntett, få knapper).

5.1 Internet Surfpad Innovative Device Technologies, Inc i California, lager (også stemmestyrte) kontrollere for nettlesing i sin produktportefølje:

(http://www.innovativedevice.com/Products/Internet_Control/internet_control.html )

http://www.nettavisen.no/it_nyheter/61327.html

http://www.lhs.com/voicexpress/

http://www.lhs.com/news/releases/19990423_smbelgian.asp

http://www.innovativedevice.com/Products/Internet_Control/internet_control.html


APPENDICES


5.2 Yepp MP3 spiller/diktafon [28.04.99] Samsung Electronics, har en ny versjon av sin Yepp MP3 spiller i kredittkort-størrelse som de hevder er verdens minste.

( http://www.digi.no/digi98.nsf/pub/dd73157932KVI2669871061 )

Yepp er en konkurrent til den kjente Rio PMP300 spilleren fra Diamond Multimedia (http://www.diamondmultimedia.com/ ) kan ta opp 160 minutters tale.

6 DIVERSE DNV fokus: Angitt indirekte ved Wear-IT engasjement.

6.1 Digitalkameraer Kodak har lansert et digitalkamera, Kodak DC240, med 1.3 Mpix oppløsning og med 3x optisk zoom og IR-sender. Dette er tatt med som eksempel på trådløs bildeoverføring til pc.

(http://www.daguerre.com/presse_detail.asp?id=199903081603)

Oppløsningen øker som kjent. Et eksempel på dette er eksisterende Olympus C-2000 ZOOM som har 2.1 Mpix (1600x1200) , og Olympus annonserte nylig 2.5 Mpix. Her er det imidlertid ikke trådløs bildeoverføring, men manuell SmartMedia PCMCIA overføring.

Det bør avklares hvor god oppløsning DNVs inspektør reelt har behov for.

6.2 StrongARM med 600 MHz for PDA'er [03.05.99] Intel lanserer en versjon av sin StrongARM prosessor som leverer 600 MHz med 0,5 W effekt. Denne vil egne seg for miniatyrisert utstyr:

(http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/em050399.htm )

http://www.digi.no/digi98.nsf/pub/dd73157932KVI2669871061

http://www.diamondmultimedia.com/

http://www.daguerre.com/presse_detail.asp?id=199903081603

http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/em050399.htm


APPENDICES


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Forskningsveien 1

Telefon: 73 59 30 00

Telefaks: 73 59 43 02

ARKIVKODE GRADERING




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4005 30.18 1999-05-11 Odd-Wiking Rahlff 85


1 WEARABLE COMPUTERS ....................................................................................................... 41 1.1 Intervju med Chris Thompson 41 2 HEADMOUNTED DISPLAYS ................................................................................................... 41 2.1 Kopin med nye små øyeskjermer 41 3 SMART MOBILE PHONES........................................................................................................ 42 3.1 Kjappe sider for håndbårne 42 3.2 Høyhastighets infrarød dataoverføring 42 4 INPUT INTERFACES.................................................................................................................. 42 4.1 Enhåndsbetjent kamera 42 4.2 Universell kortminnestasjon 43 5 DIVERSE...................................................................................................................................... 43 5.1 Ultralyds avstandsmåler 43 5.2 Elektronisk blekk 43


APPENDICES



1.1 Intervju med Chris Thompson [15.05.99] Chris Thompson fra Georgia Tech Research Institute er intervjuet av AsiaWeek på radio mer generelt om frihånds-løsninger for datainnlegging. Han er en av de som har jobbet lengst med bruk av kroppsbårne i industriell setting.

http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/onedigitalday/update/update12_2.htm

Intervjuet krever RealPlayer som er fritt tilgjengelig på nettet.


2.1 Kopin med nye små øyeskjermer [12.05.99] Kopin (http://www.kopin.com/html/cyberdisplay.html ) har lansert et displaymodul av okulartypen for bruk i eksempelvis kroppsbårne. Det heter CyberDisplay 640C og er angivelig verdens minste og minst strømkrevende farge-VGA skjerm. Størrelsen er på 0.38 tommer i diagonalen. Den er dessuten den tetteste aktiv-matrise skjermen.

[17.05.99] Noen få dager etter dette lanserte Kopin et tilsvarende displaymodul CyberDisplay 1280 som er 1280x1024 oppløsning, men denne gangen monokrom og med dobbelt så stor diagonal - 0.77 tommer. Disse vil Kopin demonstrate ved den årlige internasjonale konferansen, Society for Information Display (SID) i San Jose, 18-21 mai. Begge omtales som ganske lette.

http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/onedigitalday/update/update12_2.htm

http://www.kopin.com/html/cyberdisplay.html


APPENDICES



3.1 Kjappe sider for håndbårne [20.05.99] Ericsson har lansert et smart proxy-produkt WebOnAir Filter Proxy Gateway for websider som skal vises på småskjermer med lav båndbredde. Proxy-tjeneren bearbeider websidene slik at bilder nedskaleres, layout forenkles og innholdet komprimeres på direkten, slik at tida for fremvising av sider drastisk reduseres. Tida reduseres ned til 25% av opprinnelig med typisk dobling av hastigheten, hvilket innebærer at en surfing via mobil på 9.6 vil fortone seg mer som 28.8 modem surfing.

Produktet kan fritt lastes ned via softwaresidene på:

(http://mobileinternet.ericsson.se/emi/Default.asp )

3.2 Høyhastighets infrarød dataoverføring [18.05.99] IrDA (Infrared Data Association, http://www.irda.org/ ) har på møte i mars godkjent endelig versjon av høyhastighetsstandarden AIr (= Avansert InfraRød) som retningsgivende.

Dataoverføringsstandarden legger opp til 3.5 Mbps overføring for enheter plassert inntil 5 meter fra hverandre og krever ikke lenger at de infrarøde "øynene" ser hverandre direkte. Chipsene koster rundt 10$. IBM har nylig lansert produkter basert på AIr.

(http://www.irda.org/news/pubs/4899meeting.pdf )


4.1 Enhåndsbetjent kamera [20.04] Fujifilm, ( http://www.fujifilm.com/ ) er også over 2 Mpix barrieren hvilket gir like gode digitalbilder som tradisjonelle filmkameraer. I denne måneden lanseres iflg PC Magazine som har sett preview av deres modell Fujifilm DX-2700 . Med sine 2.3 Mpix og 1800x1200 oppløsning og så liten og James Bond-aktig at den får plass i skjortelomma, kan den være noe å se nærmere på. All betjening gjøres med en hand og uten at blikket trenger å tas fra målsøkeren. Den har imidlertid ikke optisk zoom og har fastmontert blitz. den bruker SmartMedia kort som har 32 MB maksimalkapasitet.

http://mobileinternet.ericsson.se/emi/Default.asp

http://www.irda.org/

http://www.irda.org/news/pubs/4899meeting.pdf

http://www.fujifilm.com/


APPENDICES


4.2 Universell kortminnestasjon [20.04] Dersom mange digitale bilder skal bulkoverføres fra kamera til pc kan overføringshastigheten være lang. Typisk vil hvert bilde ta ett minutt å overføre, men dersom man benytter en universell kortminnestasjon såsom Antec PhotoChute 3 USB (http://www.antec-inc.com ) som er på størrelse med en litt stor mus, kan hvert bilde leses inn på et par sekunder. Det er USB basert og leser både føromtalte SmartMedia, samt Compact Flash og Type I og II ATA kort.

(http://www.antec-inc.com/products/pcread/datps1.html )

Behovsavklaring: DNV avklarer hvor mange fotos en typisk inspeksjon resulterer i.


5.1 Ultralyds avstandsmåler [16.08.98] Stanleys IntelliMeasure (http://www.stanleyworks.com/Intellimeasure0898.htm) er en ultralyd-basert avstandsmåler som primært benyttes til å beregne volum av rom. Den måler på tre sekunder avstander opp til 20 m med 95% nøyaktighet. Man peker med laserprikken på det som skal måles og avleser deretter på LCD.

5.2 Elektronisk blekk [07.05.99] E Ink har annonsert første løvskjerm med elektronisk blekk:

http://w3.digi.no/digi98.nsf/pub/dd73921918hab9325093462

Med en tykkelse på 3 mm og dimensjon i ovenstående tilfelle på 122 x 183 cm muliggjør dette på sikt svært avanserte papiraktige skjermer. Oppløsning og oppdateringsfrekvens er ikke angitt for denne demoversjonen.

Det er forøvrig resultater av forskningen til Jacobson ved MIT Media Lab. Da SINTEF deltok på ISWC'97 viste man siste dag fram et slips (!) der bokstavene "MIT" dukket opp når de slo på strømmen.

Se mer om E Ink på: http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980706/coo6.html

http://www.antec-inc.com/

http://www.antec-inc.com/products/pcread/datps1.html

http://www.stanleyworks.com/Intellimeasure0898.htm

http://w3.digi.no/digi98.nsf/pub/dd73921918hab9325093462

http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1998/980706/coo6.html


APPENDICES


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Forskningsveien 1

Telefon: 73 59 30 00

Telefaks: 73 59 43 02

ARKIVKODE GRADERING




x

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400530.18 1999-06-11 Eric Swane, Odd-Wiking Rahlff 8


URL'er dateres med oppdateringsdatoen der det er relevant, de fleste web-sider genereres nå dynamisk på tjener-siden, så når dato ikke oppgis, betyr det at dette notats dato gjelder, vi sjekker alltid referansene under skriving. 1 WEARABLE COMPUTERS ....................................................................................................... 45 1.1 Pen tablets: Fujitsu Personal Systems 45 1.2 Surfe- og leseplater: Softbook og WebPad 46 1.3 Field proof computer: Geodimeter® Geodat®Win 46 2 HEADMOUNTED DISPLAYS ................................................................................................... 47 2.1 Kaiser Proview Head-Mounted Displays 47 2.2 Personal Monitor 47 3 SMART MOBILE PHONES........................................................................................................ 48 3.1 WWW:MMM symbolet 48 3.2 NeoPoint 1000 48 4 INPUT INTERFACES.................................................................................................................. 49 4.1 The Cyberlink™ Mind Mouse 49 4.2 Øyestyring: EyeTech Digital Systems 50 4.3 En flora av små talebaserte medhjelpere 50 4.4 Hjulvelgere: Nokia 7110 Navi™ Roller 51 5 DIVERSE...................................................................................................................................... 51 5.1 Oracle8i Lite 51 5.2 Telenor FoUs rapport fra CHI'99 51


APPENDICES



Denne gangen fokuserer vi på kroppsbærbare maskiner med store display, såkalte pen-tablets, beregnet for applikasjoner der lesbarhet av detaljrike presentasjoner av f eks kart, arbeidstegninger og tekst prioriteres framfor miniatyrisering. De er "underarm-holdt" som hardplata med papirklype (se bildet), og kan eventuelt bæres oppklappet på brystet. Foruten det gode displayet, ligger fordelene i utnyttelse av etablert input-teknologi (pennstyring) og brukergrensesnitt (f eks Windows-miljø). Dette er maskiner med langt større ressurser ombord enn palmtops ol. Gjennomgående er slike maskiner billigere og sannsynligvis mer stabile enn de mer "ekte" wearables.

1.1 Pen tablets: Fujitsu Personal Systems Fujitsu (http://www.fpsi.fujitsu.com/products/) er pionéren på store pen-tablets. De har et produktutvalg som stadig videreutvikles, fordelt på to produktfamilier, Stylistic og Point (henholdsvis venstre og høyre i bildet nedenfor). Point serien inkluderer trådløs kommunikasjon mens det legges mer datakraft og bedre displayteknologi i Stylistic serien. Maskinene er basert på PC-teknologi og har gjerne alt det en kan ønske seg av muligheter. De nyeste modellene veier omlag 1.8 kg hvilket er forholdsvis tungt på armen i det lange løp. SINTEF har forøvrig en Point 1600. Maskinene har også en lettere serie som tetter gapet mot palmtops (typisk Windows CE).

http://www.fpsi.fujitsu.com/products/


APPENDICES


Skryteteksten for Stylistic 2300 (http://www.fpsi.fujitsu.com/products/st2300.htm) sier:

Delivering breakthrough color, notebook performance, a shock-mounted 4.1 GB hard drive and universal connectivity in a handheld form-factor, the powerhouse Stylistic 2300 pen tablet computer from Fujitsu Personal Systems, Inc. (FPSI) bears the "Designed for Windows NT® and Windows® 98" logo and boasts a 233 MHz Pentium® MMX processor. Specifically designed for broad applicability in meeting mobile computing needs, the Stylistic 2300 is the first pen computer to offer a truly portable, information-rich color display viewable both outdoors and indoors.

Incorporating real-world feedback from users, resellers and complementary vendors alike, the Stylistic 2300 combines the latest technologies like a color transflective (CTF) Super VGA (SVGA) display, 32-bit pen support, USB and Pentium MMX while protecting customer investments in existing peripherals and 16-bit applications.

1.2 Surfe- og leseplater: Softbook og WebPad En annen interessant klasse maskiner er pen-tablets optimalisert mot bruk i sofaen. Teknologien som utvikles her for et stort allemanns-marked vil gi biter av interesse for mer profesjonell bruk Disse maskinene har gjerne trådløs forbindelse til modemet, som danner brua mot selve web'en, kort sagt navlestrenger for innendørs bruk. Dessuten er gjerne ambisjonsnivået å gjøre skjermene så gode at en like gjerne leser store mengder tekst på dem framfor å trykke stoffet ut for lesing fra papir.

Softbook Reader til venstre http://www.softbook.com/index.asp

Cyrix WebPad til høyre http://www.cyrix.com/html/emerging/index.htm

1.3 Field proof computer: Geodimeter® Geodat®Win Når det gjelder mobil datafangst viser flg eksempel at det fins

• versjoner av standard teknologi laget for røff feltbruk

• bærbart utstyr som ikke er så allment kjent fordi det adresserer seg til smalere markeder

http://www.fpsi.fujitsu.com/products/st2300.htm

http://www.softbook.com/index.asp

http://www.cyrix.com/html/emerging/index.htm


APPENDICES


http://www.geotronics.se/geodatwin.shtml

Denne maskinen Geodimeter® Geodat®Win er optimalisert mot datafangst av stedbundne data. Bildene til høyre viser at maskinen er beregnet brukt til ulike oppgaver og at en oppnår profesjonell kvalitet (f eks kommunikasjons- og batterikapasitet) ved å tillate utstyret å ha den nødvendige vekt og størrelse.


2.1 Kaiser Proview Head-Mounted Displays Profesjonelle HMDs ligger tradisjonelt i en høy prisklasse for utbredt bruk, men det gjelder å følge med utviklingen her.

Slikt utstyr har gjerne svært attraktive egenskaper, f eks har Kaisers ProView TM 50 ST (halvgjennomskinnelig) en "field of view" på 50 grader, noe som gir et naturlig og "nært" bilde. Veiledende pris er imidlertid USD 49 995, men ProView 30 (30 graders ikke-se-igjennom) er på tilbud til USD 7 295. Det er mange modeller, og i disse dager introduseres en XL-serie i XGA-oppløsning (1024H x 768V).

Proview 30 til venstre og den nye Proview XL50 til høyre. http://www.keo.com/

2.2 Personal Monitor Nye ting skjer ikke hver uke på denne fronten. Produktet Personal Monitor vant Wearables Central 1998 pris for beste kroppsbårne skjerm. "Nese-TV" (som noen har døpt den) har visse fordeler framfor hjelm-montert display. Enheten koster ikke all verden og kan være noe å studere nærmere, selv om den er litt klumpete.

http://www.geotronics.se/geodatwin.shtml

http://www.keo.com/


APPENDICES


Prof. Steve Mann, som står bak WearComp har testet dem og uttaler bl a:

Because of its light weight, the apparatus is also very comfortable to wear for many hours. It is built into eyeglasses rather than a helmet type design, and this makes it more natural to wear, and also more acceptable to those who don't want to "mess up their hair".

http://www.skyex.com/albatech/


3.1 WWW: MMM symbolet

Dette er symbolet eller slagordet Nokia tar i bruk for å fortelle at mobiltelefonen eller communicator'en er WAP-kompatibel. MMM står for Mobile Media Mode.

Første telefon med dette merket er Nokia 7110. Den gir adgang til det meste av det som finnes av tekst informasjon på Internett og gjøre en rekke ting, som å bestille billetter.

http://www.nokia.com/phones/7110/index.html (7 juni 1999)

3.2 NeoPoint 1000 NeoPoint 1000 fra NeoPoint er en CDMA (http://www.a-ten.com/art/cdma.htm) telefon som kommer ut i juni. Uten at vi har sammenlignet kandidatene nøye, så tilhører denne mobiltelefonen tetgruppen når det gjelder å inkludere funksjoner fra PDA-domenet.

http://www.skyex.com/albatech/

http://www.nokia.com/phones/7110/index.html

http://www.a-ten.com/art/cdma.htm


APPENDICES


http://www.neopoint.com/neopoint/products/index.html (4 juni 1999)


4.1 The Cyberlink™ Mind Mouse Mind Mouse fra Cyberlink skal med litt trening virke ganske godt. Den er også nevnt som en del av DNVs ønskede fokus. Den koster omlag USD 1 500.

The Cyberlink Mind Mouse is a revolutionary hands-free computer controller which allows you to move and ‘click’ a mouse cursor, play video games, create music, and control external devices, all without using your hands.

A headband with three sensors detects electrical signals on the forehead resulting from subtle facial muscle, eye, and brain activity. This headband connects to an interface box which amplifies and digitizes the forehead signals and sends them to your computer. The Cyberlink™ software decodes the forehead signals into ten BrainFingers™ for continuous cursor control. It also decodes eye motion and facial gestures into mouse button clicks, keystrokes, and cursor resolution control. With a little practice, most or all of these commands can be mastered to operate virtually all computer functions.

http://www.mindmouse.com/

http://www.neopoint.com/neopoint/products/index.html

http://www.mindmouse.com/


APPENDICES


4.2 Øyestyring: EyeTech Digital Systems Vi lodder status på området og ser her på et produkt Quick Glance som har vært vist omkring på utstillinger. I og med at det ikke er utelukkende hodemontert, er det neppe aktuelt for WearIT, men bildene gir et bilde av størrelsen. Det går kanskje ikke så mange år før dette er interessant?

Quick Glance is a new assistive technology device which provides an efficient alternative to the mouse. It moves the cursor according to the user's eye movements. Quick Glance runs under Windows 95 and can be used in conjunction with any Windows software. Cursor placement on toolbars and menus is consistent and easy. A zoom feature enables greater accuracy when needed for doing precision work such as Computer Aided Design.

Voice dictation software can also be used with the Quick Glance System resulting in efficient, hands-free operation for both text entry and pointing operations.

http://www.eyetechds.com/ (13 Jan 1998)

SINTEF har prøvd den på en demo og det var klart at her trengs det trening for å styre musa som flytter seg rundt mens man skjærer sine styregrimaser…

4.3 En flora av små talebaserte medhjelpere Nå for tida kan en ikke åpne et datablad eller lignende uten å lese om en eller annen ny dings som du kan diktere ting på, som minner deg om møter, osv. De utgjør ennå kanskje mest "gadgets" for techno-freaker, men er også i ferd med å få viktige roller i forbindelse med spesielle yrker eller oppgaver. I den grad en ønsker å skreddersy noe slikt til eget formål, er tiden moden for utprøving. Følgende tilfeldige eksempel viser at noen tør satse på tale 100%.

http://www.voicediary.com/products.htm

Israelske Voice Diary er en personlig organisator basert på kun tale inn og ut. Den inkluderer avtalebok, notatbok, huskeliste, adresse- og telefonkatalog, kalkulator, alarmklokke og stoppeklokke.

http://www.eyetechds.com/

http://www.voicediary.com/products.htm


APPENDICES


4.4 Hjulvelgere: Nokia 7110 Navi™ Roller Blant inputenhetene for kroppsbårne anser vi ulike hjulvelgere for å være mest lovende. Nå introduserer Nokia det på mobiltelefonene sine, med smart programvare, og dermed bringes denne type enhet ut i det beste testlaboratoriet, nemlig massemarkedet.

Mer informasjon på http://www.nokia.com/phones/7110/phone/new/roller.html (7 juni 1999)


5.1 Oracle8i Lite Når WearIT applikasjonen skal utvikles, kan det bli behov for et databasesystem på den bærbare, og da kan det være frigjørende å bruke et system som selv sørger for toveis replikering (synkronisering), slik som dette fra en av de store aktørene.

Oracle8i Lite provides users with continuous access to enterprise information from any browser on any device from any location. Whether accessing information offline, with Oracle8i Lite, or online, with Project Panama, users will have the latest business knowledge at their fingertips. Oracle8i Lite, the Internet platform for mobile computing, is a single-user, 50KB-750KB footprint, object relational database specifically designed for mobile computing applications requiring seamless synchronization with central databases. Supporting a wide range of operating systems including Windows95/98/NT, Windows CE, Palm OS, EPOC 32 and Chorus, Oracle8i Lite is optimized for use on small mobile application devices, such as laptops, handheld computers and personal digital assistants(PDAs).

http://www.oracle.com/mobile/o8ilite/index.html (8 juni 1999)

5.2 Telenor FoUs rapport fra CHI'99 Svein Heiestad fra Telenor har publisert sine inntrykk, med vekt på brukergrensesnitt for små mobile på:

http://pi.nta.no/norsk/kabal/chi1999report.html (3 juni 1999).

http://www.nokia.com/phones/7110/phone/new/roller.html

http://www.oracle.com/mobile/o8ilite/index.html

http://pi.nta.no/norsk/kabal/chi1999report.html


APPENDICES


NOTAT GJELDER


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SINTEF Tele og data





Forskningsveien 1

Telefon: 73 59 30 00

Telefaks: 73 59 43 02

ARKIVKODE GRADERING




x

x


400530.18 1999-09-10 Eric Swane, Odd-Wiking Rahlff 85


URL'er dateres med oppdateringsdatoen der det er relevant, de fleste web-sider genereres nå dynamisk på tjener-siden, så når dato ikke oppgis, betyr det at dette notats dato gjelder, vi sjekker alltid referansene under skriving. 1 WEARABLE COMPUTERS ....................................................................................................... 53 1.1 Fullspekket wearable prototype: Urban Jungle Pack 53 1.2 Belteløsninger for pen-tablets 53 1.3 Mobile flatskjermløsninger 54 1.4 GemBook og andre boklesere 55 2 HEADMOUNTED DISPLAYS ................................................................................................... 55 2.1 M1 Personal Viewer 56 3 SMART MOBILE PHONES........................................................................................................ 56 3.1 Mobil videofon introdusert 56 3.2 Bluetooth 1.0 klar 56 4 INPUT INTERFACES.................................................................................................................. 57 4.1 Innebygd digitalt kamera 57 5 DIVERSE...................................................................................................................................... 57 5.1 IBM og Philips samarbeid om taleteknologi 57 5.2 Distinkte kategorier bærbare 57 5.3 iCab: Web-leser med strukturert navigasjon 58 5.4 Kompis endelig på web 59 5.5 Myke men robuste batterier under utvikling 59 5.6 Wear IT jeans 59


APPENDICES



1.1 Fullspekket wearable prototype: Urban Jungle Pack Tyske ART+COM AG i Berlin har med støtte fra EUs ESPRIT-prosjekt TRIMEDIA utviklet en heller diger prototyp av en kroppsbåren løsning for i utgangspunktet mobil feltjournalistikk.

Pakken kalles Urban Jungle Pack (UJP) http://www.artcom.de/projects/UJP/UJPen/project.html og er noe av det mest fullspekkede mhp tilkoplet utstyr vi har kommet over. Den har interessant nok både elektronisk kompass og GPS/dGPS mottaker, samt bevegelsessensor for hodebevegelser. Som skjerm benyttes en Sony Glasstron PLM-S700 HMD med en oppløsning på 832*624 pixel. Med dette utstyret kan bilder tas og merkes med sted og synsvinkel, men naturligvis bare utendørs. En dobbeltbånds GSM-telefon er med for bildeoverføring som valgbare "frimerker" som en fjernarbeider kan bruke som utvalg for mer detaljert overføring. Prisantydning hele 250 KNOK!

1.2 Belteløsninger for pen-tablets Forrige gang fokuserte vi på kroppsbærbare maskiner med store display, såkalte pen-tablets. Det er ikke lett å gi helt slipp på det, for det fins flere. Noen leverandører har en beltefesteanordning til sine tablets. Perkins Engineering har løsninger som er frihånds og "fri-øyes" løsninger såsom Mid Riff Brain. (Som et kuriosum kan nevnes at noe begrunnes med at "The MRB's™ design gently massages muscles in the lumbar region while flexing on the wearer's torso.")

På http://perkinsengineering.com/page4.htm finnes det en nærmere beskrivelse inklusive bilder for hvordan maskinen fungerer når skjermen er parkert, når en kun leser den, når en skriver og når en deler den med andre.

http://www.artcom.de/projects/UJP/UJPen/project.html

http://www.artcom.de/projects/UJP/UJPen/project.html

http://perkinsengineering.com/page4.htm


APPENDICES


1.3 Mobile flatskjermløsninger Det kommer stadig nye mobile flatskjermløsninger. Eksempler er:

Orasis fra Dauphin Technology, http://www.dauphintech.com/orasis.html,

De industrielle PEN*KEY produktene til Norand Mobile Systems under Intermec Technologies Corp., http://www.intermec.com/mobile/index.html (som forøvrig også har kroppsbårne skrivere!)

De robuste pen-pc terminalene til Data General, WiiN-Terminal,

http://www.dg.com/products/html/wiinterm_thin_clients.html, eller Qubit Internet access appliance, http://www.qubit.net/The Hardware.htm

http://www.dauphintech.com/orasis.html

http://www.intermec.com/mobile/index.html

http://www.dg.com/products/html/wiinterm_thin_clients.html

http://www.qubit.net/The Hardware.htm


APPENDICES


1.4 GemBook og andre boklesere For ren informasjonslesing er enda en ny bokleser kommet ut, se http://www.gembook.com/ (NB! siten er

under omlegging og er ustabil!) Men det er mange flere, se http://www.ebooknet.com/.

For eksempel Rocket eBook på http://www.rocket-ebook.com/Products/Tour/index.html som nå har over ett år bak seg.


2.1 M1 Personal Viewer (99) For 500$ selger TekGear sin M1 modell. Dette er en VGA-tilkoplbar øyeskjerm som har en oppløsning på 320x240 gråtoner.

http://www.gembook.com/

http://www.ebooknet.com/

http://www.rocket-ebook.com/Products/Tour/index.html

http://www.rocket-ebook.com/Products/Tour/index.html


APPENDICES


Mer på http://www.tekgear.ca/displays/m1.html


3.1 Mobil videofon introdusert (18.05.99) Japanske Kyocera har som første av sitt slag introdusert en mobiltelefon med innebygget kamera og skjerm for bildeoverføring: VisualPhone VP-210, som kan klare to bilder i sekundet og også kan duplisere som stillbildekamera.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/ptech/9905/18/japan.phonetv/

3.2 Bluetooth 1.0 klar (26.07.99) Bluetooth SIG har sluppet den første offisielle spesifikasjon av Bluetooth standarden "Bluetooth Version 1.0 Foundation Core". Produkttesting vil skje nå til høsten med de første

kommersielle produktene ventet våren 2001.

http://www.bluetooth.com/v2/news/show.asp?page=pressreleases&id=8

http://www.tekgear.ca/displays/m1.html

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/ptech/9905/18/japan.phonetv/

http://www.bluetooth.com/v2/news/show.asp?page=pressreleases&id=8


APPENDICES



4.1 Innebygd digitalt kamera I WearIt lever ideen om å integrere måleutstyr i lykta inspektørene alltid bærer med seg. De som produserer bærbare strek-kode-lesere, som jo er bærbare datamaskiner og ganske utbredte sådanne, har etter samme prinsipp lagt til en finesse på sine terminaler. Strek-kode-leseren nedenfor, Dolphin with Image-Capture™, har innebygd et digitalt kamera. Terminalen kan fange opp bilder av f eks underskrifter eller skader, selv under svært magre lysforhold.

http://www.handheld.com/ (1 juni 1999)


5.1 IBM og Philips samarbeid om taleteknologi [14.mai.99] PC World Ekspress, nr 17, s 8, melder IBM og Philips har inngått samarbeid. Dette vil resultere i at Philips får utnytte IBMs talegjenkjenningsteknologi i sin FreeSpeech 2000, som per idag støtter 9 språk, men som skal utvides til 100 - også norsk.

5.2 Distinkte kategorier bærbare Etter et besøk (11 juni 1999) hos en norsk bedrift, la oss kalle den B, som er i ferd med å endre og flytte applikasjoner til kroppsbåret utstyr (og som ikke ønsker oppmerksomhet om det ennå), har vi filosofert

http://www.handheld.com/


APPENDICES


litt om hvordan og når ulike tilnærminger til wearables vil konvergere. Vil det for alltid forbli et gap mellom datadomenets og teledomenets tilnærminger? WearIt synes kanskje å ha et bein i hver leir, men kanskje blir det behov for å velge. Tenk over det!

Bedriften B leverer skreddersydde programvareløsninger til drøye seks hundre kunder i Norge og i Norden. Alt er basert på PC teknologi og Windows 95. De bruker basis programvare fra Microsoft og andre, ikke minst anerkjente programbiblioteker innenfor sitt fagdomene. Som svært mange andre programvarebedrifter ligger det i forretningsideen til B at de ikke har ressurser til å utvikle noe selv, utover den endelige skreddersyingen til akkurat det markedet de kjenner best av alle.

B har fulgt med på "bærbarhet" i fire år og ventet på det riktige tidspunktet. En leverandør av instrumentene de benytter seg av, tilbyr nå et beltebåret utstyr med instrument og komplett datamaskin godt integrert. Rollene er klare, noen leverer utstyr, B leverer programvaren. Poenget er at både utstyr og programvare må følge standarden, dvs PC teknologi og Windows, ellers går det ikke.

Følgelig vil det bli tilbudt wearables basert på PC-teknologi, a la Xybernaut, i lang tid framover. I SINTEF har vi nok hatt mer tro på at wearables vil utvikle sin egne og mer egnede plattformer, basert på teknologier som f eks Symbian og WAP. Og de kommer med tyngde fra mobiltelefon-kanten, som allemannseide "communicator's" med PIM verktøy osv. Men B sin mobile spesialiserte applikasjon krever mer enn PDA-klasse datakraft, mer enn det som kan dyttes i en mobiltelefon, og displayet må være større. Den krever en kroppsbærbar PC, punktum.

Det blir nok mange mer eller mindre distinkte kategorier bærbare framover, hvilke tilfredsstiller WearIt sine behov best? Vil gapene representere problemer i nærmeste framtid?

5.3 iCab: Web-leser med strukturert navigasjon Vi har vært opptatt av alternative web-lesere til Netscape og Internet Explorer, med bedre egenskaper mht "footprint" størrelse, tilpasningsmuligheter, osv. Den norske nettleseren Opera (http://www.opera.no/) stiller her i særklasse, og foruten alle Windows plattformene kommer Opera nå med støtte for Amiga, Psion, UNIX og BeOS.

Apropos web-leser-plattformer. Den 16 juni kom pressemeldingen om at Telenor lisensierer Spyglass® teknologi for å oppnå raskere mobil Internet informasjonstjenester.

iCab går på Mac, men det er de innovative trekkene som vekker vår interesse. Det er innført en lenke-meny (se bildet nedenfor), og de representerer innføringen av strukturert navigasjon i web-design og -lesing. Konsepter som dette bør kunne gjøre bruken av tynne klienter og bærbart utstyr lettere og raskere.

http://www.useit.com/papers/icab.html (5 juni 1999) eller http://www.icab.de/ (mest tysk).

http://www.opera.no/

http://www.spyglass.com/newsflash/releases/061699telnor.html

http://www.useit.com/papers/icab.html

http://www.icab.de/


APPENDICES


5.4 Kompis endelig på web Og litt egenreklame: Omsider er SINTEFs KOMPIS-prosjekt på web:

http://www.informatics.sintef.no/projects/kompis/Wearables.html

5.5 Myke men robuste batterier under utvikling Wired News melder 03.08.99 at det amerikanske forsvaret som holder på med utvikling av sitt svære kroppsbårne Land Warrior konsept har inngått en kontrakt med Ultralife om å utvikle slagrobuste batterier fram mot år 2003. Disse vil kunne lagre dobbelt så mye energi, eller bli halvt så store. De vil dessuten kunne formes etter behov som plastlag.

http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21061.html

5.6 Wear IT jeans Som et kuriosum kom vi over dette. Intet navn er nytt under webben, tydeligvis…

http://www.informatics.sintef.no/projects/kompis/Wearables.html

http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21061.html


APPENDICES


NOTAT GJELDER


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SINTEF Tele og data





Forskningsveien 1

Telefon: 73 59 30 00

Telefaks: 73 59 43 02

ARKIVKODE GRADERING




x

x


400530.18 1999-12-22 Odd-Wiking Rahlff 85


URL'er dateres med oppdateringsdatoen der det er relevant, de fleste web-sider genereres nå dynamisk på tjener-siden, så når dato ikke oppgis, betyr det at dette notats dato gjelder, vi sjekker alltid referansene under skriving.

1 WEARABLE COMPUTERS ....................................................................................................... 61 1.1 Xybernaut støtter nå Linux 61 1.2 Med komponenter under huden: Digital Angel 61 1.3 Smart Clothing: ”Intelligente” fritidsklær 62 1.4 Mer nytt om IBMs kroppsbårne 62 2 HEADMOUNTED DISPLAYS ................................................................................................... 62 3 SMART MOBILE PHONES........................................................................................................ 62 Ny røff mobil fra Ericsson 63 3.2 SINTEF med internprosjekt på blåtannsteknologi til våren 63 4 INPUT INTERFACES.................................................................................................................. 64 4.1 Qbe Tablet: Armbåren tavle-pc med kamera 64 4.2 En Palm-klon seiler opp: Handspring Visor 65 5 DIVERSE...................................................................................................................................... 65 5.1 Kolliderende blåtann med 802.11 65 5.2 Webtjener på et fyrstikkhode 65


APPENDICES



1.1 Xybernaut støtter nå Linux [InfoWorld, 15.12.99] Xybernaut (http://www.xybernaut.com/) støtter nå på sin Mobile Assistant IV Linux ( http://www.linux.org/ )som jo som kjent er et godt, stabilt og ikke minst gratis operativsystem. De har inngått partnerskap med programvaresammenslutningen Software Zentrum Boblingen/Sindelfingen e.V. ("SBS") for utvikling av Linux programvare her.

Mer på http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=105&STORY=/www/story/12-20-1999/0001100577

1.2 Med komponenter under huden: Digital Angel

[CNN, 20.12.99] Applied Digital Solutions har nylig fått patent på en teknologisk miniatyrkomponent Digital Angel, for posisjonspeiling som etter utsagn vil kunne opereres inn under huden og få sin energi ved muskelbevegelser hos bæreren. ADS ser for seg denne peilbare komponenten innoperert hos eksempelvis småbarn som da aldri vil forsvinne fra sine ”årvåkne” foreldre.

Mer på http://applieddig.com/news/index.html .

http://www.xybernaut.com/

http://www.linux.org/

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=105&STORY=/www/story/12-20-1999/0001100577

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=105&STORY=/www/story/12-20-1999/0001100577

http://applieddig.com/news/index.html


APPENDICES


1.3 Smart Clothing: ”Intelligente” fritidsklær [Ingeniørnytt, nr 22, 17.12.99] Finske Reima-Tutta Oy har utviklet såkalte ”intelligente” fritidsklær kalt Smart Clothing, der temperatursensorer og pulssensorer er integrert sammen med GPS og telekommunikasjon og varmestrålere. De har også en mikrodatamaskin som kan styres med votter på. Klærne skal kunne overvåke brukerens tilstand i ekstreme omgivelser, gi passende varme og navigasjonshjelp, og varsle nødtjeneste med posisjonsangivelse dersom uhellet er ute.

Klærne skal lanseres på Verdensutstillingen EXPO 2000 i Hannover til sommeren http://www.expo2000.de/ . Mer på http://www.reima.fi/smart.htm

1.4 Mer nytt om IBMs kroppsbårne [CNET, 20.12.99] Dersom IBM ikke allerede har informert dere direkte, er det mer nytt å finne om deres kroppsbårne i EON-klassen (= "edge of the network”) her. Blant annet planlegger de ikke overraskende bruk av blåtannsteknologi i dem. Maskinene blir forhandlet av Olympus når de slippes til neste år (hvis de slippes).

Mer på http://home.cnet.com/category/0-1006-200-1501451.html

og http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1474374.html

Med IBMs bøyelige transistorteknologi og digitalt papir, samt tidligere omtalt bøyelige batterier, får vi nok etterhvert se informasjonsdingser som likner lite på de klumpete sakene vi har i dag…


(ingen nyheter denne gangen)


http://www.expo2000.de/

http://www.reima.fi/smart.htm

http://home.cnet.com/category/0-1006-200-1501451.html

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1474374.html


APPENDICES


3.1 Ny røff mobil fra Ericsson

[Mobil #5,99] Ericsson har i høst lansert sin modell R250 PRO, som er en røff dobbeltbånds mobil som vil tåle behandling som skipsinspektører kan gi den. Den er beregnet på skogsarbeidere, lastebilsjåfører og landbrukere. Telefonen er den første fra det holdet som med sin gore-tex kappe tåler å bli nedsenket i vann, slått mot stein, kulde, etc, og kan betjenes med hansker på. Til gjengjeld er den ganske stor: 145x55x32mm og veier 270 g. Taletid er 4,5 t, med 135 t standby. Den har høytalerfunksjon og kan benyttes som walkie-talkie mot opp til 16 andre R250 PRO mobiler, slik at kostadene for kortholdskommunikasjon blir lave.

Ericsson har hatt noen forsinkelser med modellen som ble vist på CeBIT, men regner med at den er på markedet sent i ’99.(se http://www.ericsson.com/infocenter/publications/contact/R250_PRO.html )

3.2 SINTEF med internprosjekt på blåtannsteknologi til våren Vår gruppe holder på å spesifisere et internprosjekt Camel Light med fokus på blåtannsteknologi for personlig kortholdskommunikasjon mellom systemmoduler inn mot en WAP-telefon for overføring av data til og fra fjerntliggende tjenere. Prosjektet vil sannsynligvis kunne starte på våren 2000, og vil dreie seg rundt scenarier for å taleannotere bilder inn mot en felles database.

Dersom dere i DNV ønsker å være med på tanker rundt dette, burde dette være mulig å få til.

http://www.ericsson.com/infocenter/publications/contact/R250_PRO.html


APPENDICES



4.1 Qbe Tablet: Armbåren tavle-pc med kamera På Comdex viste amerikanske Aqcess Technologies Inc. frem sin Qbe (uttales ”cube”) Personal Computing Tablet, pennbaserte tavle-pc med Windows 98/NT og rått spekket: Den har en 450 MHz Mobile Pentium III prosessor, 64/128 MB RAM (utvidbar til 512B), 8 GB HD, og innebygget CD eller DVD. Dessuten har den fargeskjerm på 1024x768 pixler. Dessuten har den USB, og Firewire og innbygget modem og eternettkopling. Og to PCMCIA kortplasser.

Det følger med taleprogramvare (L&H Voice XpressTM Professional) og hodetelefon, samt et lite digitalkamera som kan sveives rundt på toppen. Den støtter også skriftgjenkjenning og – sogar ansiktsgjenkjenning, men så veier hele stasen til gjengjeld også 2,5 kg og går for ca 40.000 kr.

Batterilevetid estimeres til 2,5-4 timer.

Qbe ble kåret til ”Best of Comdex” av PC Week. Mer på http://www.qbenet.com/

http://www.qbenet.com/


APPENDICES


4.2 En Palm-klon seiler opp: Handspring Visor [09.99] En meget interessant og ny hest er dukket opp på arenaen for håndholdte PPC’er: Handspring’s Visor. Denne PPC’en er laget av mannen som sto bak PalmPilot’en nemlig Jeff Hawkins.

http://www.handspring.com/

Maskinen har i sin dyreste utgave 8 MB RAM og en plass til et såkalt Springboard ekspansjonsmodul (se bildet) som bl.a.kan være GPS-mottaker, blåtannsmodul (NB!), eller mobiltelefondel. Og disse forskjellige Springboards kan skiftes ut mens maskinen er påslått (hotswapping). Spesielt bør Widcomm’s blåtannsmodul fremheves. Mer om denne finner du på: http://www.widcomm.com/products/module.htm

http://www.handspring.com/company/pr4.asp http://www.jpsystems.com/press_rel/press25.asp

Visor vil med en pris på 2.000 kr bli en skikkelig billig-konkurrent til 3Coms kjente Palm til minst 3.000,- som for tiden fremstår som vinneren på PDA-markedet etter at stadig fler, såsom Philips og Everex, trekker seg ut av Microsofts notorisk ustabile og trege operativsystem WinCE. Imidlertid må vi utenfor Nord-Amerika belage oss på å vente med å få kjøpt den til ute i neste år.


5.1 Kolliderende blåtann med 802.11 [PC World Ekspress nr. 39, 99] Bluetooth og trådløst lokalnett over 802.11-standarden går heller dårlig sammen: De kjører begge på frekvensen 2.4 GHz! Her holder produsentene på å utrede strategier for hvordan disse to typene nett skal kunne sameksistere.

5.2 Webtjener på et fyrstikkhode [Technology News, 09.99] Verdens minste webtjener er satt sammen av en hovedfagsstudent fra University of Massachussetts av deler for en tier og kan beskues med detaljer om oppførsel etc på:

http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/%7eshri/iPic.html

Fant lenken på:

http://church.computer.org/computer/Technology_News0999_2.htm

http://www.handspring.com/

http://www.widcomm.com/products/module.htm

http://www.handspring.com/company/pr4.asp

http://www.jpsystems.com/press_rel/press25.asp

http://www-ccs.cs.umass.edu/~shri/iPic.html

http://church.computer.org/computer/Technology_News0999_2.htm


APPENDICES


APPENDIX B: FATIGUE INSPECTION FIELD SERVICE ( Sverre Gran, DTP342)

This note presents a web-based audio-visual education, training and support program for inspectors of marine units prone to fatigue fracturing. As appear from Figure 1, the service consists of four components. Those are explained in the sequel, and are operative on Internet.

Figure 1: Components of the Fatigue Inspection Field Service program with links to the audio- and the visual- parts. From http://www.dnv.com/Ocean/Guest/MoBee.htm

http://www.dnv.com/Ocean/Guest/MoBee.htm


APPENDICES


1 - Fatigue Course The Fatigue Course is web-based and audified. It displays foils with voice narration, as shown in Figure 2. It has online calculators, customised for particular numerical problems, as shown in Figure 3. Instructive images of structural details sensitive to fatigue damages, as in Figure 4, may be displayed. Text pages from compendium with illustrations and possible mathematics are provided, as in Figure 5. Address to the course entrance is: http://www.dnv.com/nbt/Fatigue/zFrame.htm

Figure 2: Foils for presentation of the course appear in the right frame of the web-page. The left frame has links to foils, calculators, compendium and other tools. The horizontal blue-white bar above the foil text activates the talker narrating the foil.

Figure 3: Online calculator fitted to a special numerical problem. Talk bar is as in Figure 2.

http://www.dnv.com/nbt/Fatigue/zFrame.htm


APPENDICES


Figure 4: For illustration purposes, structural details of elements sensitive to fatigue cracks may be drawn up on the screen.

Figure 5: Course compendium and related texts and reports, may be reproduced in the screen frame. Navigation may partly take place from hyperlinks on the instruction foils, from the Compendium link in the left frame, or from the internal Calling in the same. Talk file exists to all text, sections and equations, usually linked in from the page headings.


APPENDICES


2 - Field Phone Simulator Talk files and links to audible text are attached to most web pages of the fatigue course. In combination with the screen graphics, the audio part may enforce the learning process by activating more sensory capabilities. For pure text, the audible alternative may also sometimes be less boring than visual reading.

On the other hand, the layout of the talk is, as far as possible, prepared as a self-contained, audible presentation of the course elements. It may thus support a mobile telephone alternative, serving as a field work reminder under out-of-office conditions. To train this alternative in advance, a simulated phone network is included in the course, in parallel with the graphic screen and HTML edition. Entrance to the fatigue course field phone simulator is: http://www.dnv.com/ocean/nbt/FatiguePh.htm also shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Voice narration to foils, and audible reading of compendium and other text, may be activated through the telephone simulator pages. This may work as a training instrument for remote fieldwork.

3 - MoBee_Crax Phone Simulator The web service "Crax" for remote evaluation of cracks, is linked to the fatigue course, and appears on the address: http://www.dnv.com/Ocean/Guest/Crax.htm

A field phone simulator to the simplest of these web computers ("Crax 2"), has been devised for the MoBee research program. The front panel is displayed in Figure 7 and appears in the right frame. The left frame contains a short instruction for use. The devise is a combination of a mobile telephone and a calculator. Input data may be provided by keystrokes, or by written or spoken text. Written text may be accomplished by the audible Braille editor (DNV Report No. 92-2034, See: http://www.dnv.com/Ocean/nbt/Audit/Docs/Report.htm ). Spoken text input requires a local speech recogniser, and is not yet operative.

Output from the computer operations are keystroke echoes and short text messages, facilitated to spoken output. Mark-up for voice layout follows the DECtalk standard.

http://www.dnv.com/ocean/nbt/FatiguePh.htm

http://www.dnv.com/Ocean/Guest/Crax.htm

http://www.dnv.com/Ocean/nbt/Audit/Docs/Report.htm


APPENDICES


Figure 7: The MoBee_Crax field phone simulator is shown in the right frame. The left frame gives some user guidance, and includes also the 8-bit Braille table for keystroke text input.

4 - Hardware Handset The front panel layout of a suitable field phone may be much similar to that of an ordinary mobile telephone. The voice control, however, will need some functions similar to that of a cassette player, such as pause, rewind, repeat, fast forward, volume etc. In the case of keystroke input, the phone should have a loud-speaker, possibly also with a plug to external audio, car stereo etc. This will serve listening to long texts, instructions and reports.

On the software side, the handset should have modem, web-browser and text-to-speech software with multiple voices. Mark-up in the course texts and MoBee_Crax messages follow the DECtalk square mode practice.

Speech recogniser should be speaker-independent, and working dynamically on small site-specific vocabularies.

Since the application input consists essentially of numbers and numerical computer and calculator input, the ISO standard calculator key set is recommended.


APPENDICES


Figure 8: Layout of different front panels for virtual field phone simulators applied in the Course.


APPENDICES


APPENDIX C: BRIEF USER GUIDE FOR THE NAUTICUS SPEECH DEMONSTRATOR (Erik Nilsson, SINTEF) Erik G. Nilsson, SINTEF Telecom and Informatics, 29.8.99

Installation

In order to run the Nauticus speech demonstrator, the ViaVoice RunTime and ViaVoice SDK tools must be installed. This requires approximately 200MB free disk space on the PC. To install the ViaVoice RT, the installation file “rtduk.exe” (on the installation CD52) must be run (follow the instructions given from the installation program). When the RT is installed, the ViaVoice SDK must be installed by running the file “vvsdk15.exe” (on the installation CD – again, follow the instructions given by the installation program). Mark that the ViaVoice RT must be installed before the ViaVoice SDK. Lastly, copy the files “ScopeTree.exe” and “scope.txt” to an arbitrary directory (or run the demonstrator from the CD). The file scope.txt may be altered (at own risk) to change the data in the Survey Scope tree, but make sure not to change the numbering scheme.

Starting the demonstrator To run the demonstrator, execute the ScopeTree.exe file, either from the installation CD or from the directory to which it was copied.

Modes

The system has three modes53:

1. Selection mode 2. Conclusions mode 3. Dictation mode

In selection mode, the user may give voice commands that select different surveys, systems, and items. In conclusions mode the user may give voice commands that sets the status of the chosen survey, system or item. In dictation mode, the user may dictate any free text. At start-up, selection mode is active, with the survey scope node selected and collapsed.

Changing modes

To switch from selection mode to conclusions mode, the command "Conclusion" must be given. As response, the tab folder labelled "Conclusions" is chosen. To switch from conclusions mode back to selection mode, the command "Select" must be given. There is no visual feedback from this command. To switch from conclusions mode to dictation mode, the command “Add memo” must be given. As a response, keyboard focus is moved to the Memo edit control. To switch from dictation mode back to conclusions mode, the command “Cancel memo” or “Save memo” must be given. There is no visual feedback from this command.

52 If running the installation file for the ViaVoice RT from the CD does not work (aborts with error message), the installation file

must be copied to a hard disk, and run from there (still, an error message may occur, but installation is performed). To save disk space, the installation file (“rtduk.exe”) should be removed from the hard disk after the RT has been successfully installed.

53 The main reason for having modes is to reduce the number of available commands in different situations, and thus making the speech recognition faster and more accurate. The modes correspond well with the task execution as usually performed by surveyors.


APPENDICES


Commands in Selection mode In selection mode, the user may select the different parts of the tree representing the chosen survey scope. It is also possible to expand and collapse the chosen branch of the tree. The commands used relate the following concepts: A survey scope consists of a set of surveys. Each survey concerns a set of systems that are inspected. Connected to each system, there are a number of items that are controlled. In Nauticus, there may also be sub-items (or sub-systems?), but this is not implemented in the speech demonstrator.

The user may issue the following predefined commands: • Next survey • Previous survey • This survey • Next system • Previous system • This system • Next item • Previous item • Expand • Collapse • Conclusions

All these commands are orthogonal to the chose tree node. E.g. the command "next survey" will select the next survey (if any) regardless of whether the survey scope (the root node), a system or an item is selected. Mark that there is no command for selecting the survey scope node.

In addition, the user may choose an arbitrary node in the survey tree by saying the text connected to it. The node is selected as soon as a unique phrase is uttered. If the survey tree is small - or containing varied text - the first word could well be enough to identify a node. As a visual aid in cases of ambiguous texts, the available "next words" is showed in a list box when an ambiguous word or phrase is given.

Commands in Conclusions mode In conclusions mode, the user may give commands for choosing among the four radio button values: 1. Found in order 2. Found not in order 3. Not applicable 4. Not inspected

If radio button 2 is selected, a check box (repaired/rectified) is enabled. Such sets are available for all nodes in the survey scope tree except for the root. In Nauticus, this is a bit different. It the user sets these values for a system in Nauticus, the value is propagated to all items in that system (the same for surveys?). This mechanism is not implemented in the speech demonstrator. Each of the radio buttons and the check box (if active) may be chosen by a set of voice commands (in addition to the texts themselves):

• Found in order: "In order"; "OK" • Found not in order: "Not in order"; "Failed to pass" • Repaired/rectified (either of the words may be said): "Not so important" • Not applicable: “N.A.”; "Not relevant" • Not inspected: “Inspect later”; "Do it tomorrow"

In addition, the command "Select" must be given the change back to selection mode. This is easy to forget54!

54 There are good reasons for an automatic mode change to selection mode as soon as a legal conclusions mode command is

recognised.


APPENDICES


Functionality in Dictation mode In dictation mode, the user may dictate a text in plain English, or give the commands “Cancel memo” or “Save memo” to go back to conclusions mode. In addition, the dictation mechanism in ViaVoice includes some generic commands, like “New line”, “New paragraph”, “Comma” and “Full stop”. While dictating, full sentences ending with “Full stop” gives best recognition results.

In all modes, mouse and keyboard may to some extent be used in combination with voice commands, but care should be taken, specially in dictation mode, where keyboard focus should not be moved outside the memo edit control. Furthermore, it is not recommended to use mouse/keyboard navigation in the survey tree while in other modes than selection mode. This may even cause the program to crash.


APPENDICES


APPENDIX D: USER GUIDE FOR ELSURVEY PROTOTYPE SOFTWARE ON A WEARABLE ELSurvey.exe version 1.0.12 Responsible: Thomas Mestl, DTP343

Programmer: Christian Markussen, OCT700

The program is intended to be used on a wearable or a hand-held device. The intention is that checklists can be filled out and comments entered while still in the field. The program allows entering recordings in form of text, sounds or pictures and saves them as a binary file. A report can also be printed via a Excel spreadsheet. All opening and closing of the program is with save.

Installation: Currently there are 27 files needed for a successful installation. They are:

The programmed is installed by double-clicking on Setup. A folder called ELSurvey under Program Files folder is created containing the following files:

MACHINERY ANNUAL 10820.chk file is however not contained. The .chk files contain the checklists.

A folder (C:\Survey) is created that contains all the data related to surveys.


APPENDICES


The program is opened by starting ELSurvey (application). If it is a new survey then a Survey Properties input screen pops up:

Survey Type: a dropdown list allows to select only one survey checklist. The checklist are stored as .chk files.

IDNO: Id number of vessel, only numbers allowed.

Vessel: vessel name

Owner: owner name

Surveyor: surveyor name pre-filled (changeable)

Order No: order number

Date: pre-filled inn (changeable)

Place of survey.

A folder called <vesselname-date>, e.g. Titanic-1999-11-29 is created under C:\Surveys that holds all data about this survey. If the program is closed all data are automatically

saved. When reopening the program all recorded data are read automatically inn.

Then the main screen appears with a general menu bar (File, Edit, Survey, View and Help) on top.

File :

• New starts a new survey (Survey Properties input screen), any already ongoing survey is closed.

• Open allows to open another (parallel) survey from the folder C:/Surveys. Any ongoing survey is closed (with save).

• Save: saves manually data

• Properties: The Survey Properties screen popes up and content can be altered.

• Exit: quits program (with save)

Edit:

• Cut, Copy, Paste for text editing.

• Collapse All Rows: collapse entire checklist such that only main heading remains.

• Collapse/Expand: When on main heading striking the return key opens and collapse the corresponding individual items.


APPENDICES


Survey:

• Insert Text: Opens the text editor program.

• Insert Sound Recording: Opens the sound records program.

• Insert Fotograph: Opens the figure capture program.

• Multiple Yes: When marking elements in the condition column (hold <shift> and use ➪➩ keys to mark) recording boxes will be set to Yes. If there are NO entries they are not changed by the multiple yes, the same is true for date and number data.

• Create Excel report: generates a report in Excel that contains all the recordings and the text comments.

View:

• Status Bar: nothing

• Refresh: refreshes screen

• Options…:

Allows to set the path for the data files and to specify what programs shall be used to as text editor, sound recorder and picture capture program.

Under General the font type and size can be set. In addition the auto save time interval can be chosen individually (5 min default).

Help: gives info about version of program. No online help available yet.


APPENDICES


The main screen: The main screen is divided into two horizontal divided parts. The upper part contains the checklist and is again divided into 6 columns. The lower part shows Guidance Notes of the item that has a highlighted box in its line. All white cells can hold recordings whereas all others are kept yellow.

Column description: 1. Left column contains a yellow circle with a ! sign, i.e. , indicating that this main heading still

contains an item that has not been checked. It is only visible for collapsed checklist headings and disappears at once all sub items have been marked Yes, No or Na. A + or - sign indicates whether there are more sub items. Whenever a condition is given (i.e. No) the a red. A triangle appears on the main heading level to indicate this condition.

2. Survey column: containing the unique ID number of the checklist items.

3. Description column: containing the Item names, Date description etc.

4. Condition column: can hold a variety of elements. The most commons are: Yes, No and Na. Depending on the nature of the Description column other elements can be entered such as: Date (yyyy-mm-dd), Numbers or arbitrary. This can be done in different ways:

- when cursor in box (box highlighted) hit Return key and a drop down menu with Yes, No and Na appears. Use ➪➩ keys to select and hit Return again.

- when cursor in box (box highlighted) strike y (for Yes) or n (for No).


APPENDICES


- or use mouse and double click

- multiple Yes, see Survey/Multiple Yes.

When No is entered Activity column is automatically activated.

Any entry in Condition or Activity column can be deleted with <delete> key.

5. Activity Column: can only hold an element when at the same time a No is in the Condition column. The possible elements are: C (condition given), R (repaired) and P (pending). There are four ways of entering an element

- when cursor in Activity box (box highlighted) strike Return and a dropdown menu with (C, R and P) appears. Use ➪➩ keys to select and strike Return again.

- when having inserted a No in the Condition column the dropdown menu in the Activity column appears automatically, select elements as above.

- Enter C, R and P in the Activity column first by striking the corresponding keys and automatically there will be inserted a No in the Condition column.

- or use mouse and double click

6. Comment column: indicates whether additional comments have been given. Three different types of comments can be entered: text, sounds and pictures. More then one type of comment (e.g. multiple text comments) can entered but just one symbol is seen in the Comment box.

A comment is inserted into the line that contains a highlighted box by either striking

- Ctrl+t: insert text. opens the text editor specified under View/Options…

- Ctrl+r: insert sound, opens a sound recorder as specified under View/Options…

- Ctrl+f: insert photograph, opens a picture capturing program as specified under View/Options…

Alternatively strike Return when Comment field is highlighted, a dialog menu appears, select with Tab and hit Return. Whenever a comment is entered a small symbol in the Comment column appears.

Comments can be opened again via the Comment dialog menu and prefious comments can be selected and opened.

After some entries the screen may look just as the picture below with Yes and No's, Activity entries and comments.


APPENDICES


Reporting Feature:

The program allows to print out the findings via an Excel report. The Excel report has basically two sheets: one which is essentially the same as the main screen interface, i.e. comments are indicated as symbols (see fig. under), and one that holds all the text comments. Reporting is initiated via Survey/ Create Excel report or Ctrl+E.

In addition all recordings are saved as a binary file for a potential import into Nauticus.


APPENDICES


The Excel comment printout holds all the text comments with their unique Item ID.


APPENDICES


APPENDIX E: DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION OF A VOICE CONTROLLED INFORMATION PLATFORM APPLIED IN SHIP INSPECTION (Diploma Thesis of T. Ø. Bjørkli) Diploma Thesis of T. Ø. Bjørkli, 1999

- o0o -

mobile worker: itc solutions for the surveyorresearch.dnv.com/hci/papers/mobile worker...

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