Wearable Technology: The Next Big Thing In Computing?

There seems to be different wave in the market when computing evolved to wearable technology from mobile computing. With Internet Of Things (IoT), the wearables (wearable devices) are gaining more and more popularity.The use cases are unlimited. Take any type of industry, be it consumer electronics, personal health care such as fitness, home automation, building automation, there are applications of wearables. The wearables could be in any form such as Wrist band/watch, glass, jewellery, belts, clothing, footwear, embedded etc. These wearables communicate and control in real time. This is changing the way people are communicating/sharing with one another boosting the personal relationships. This technology is bringing a kind of togetherness among the distant people. The wearable computing is creating new business opportunities with existing products or new products altogether and we can see companies are investing in this type of computing looking at its market trend. 

The reason for this kind of good trend in wearable technology is mainly because of the availability of low cost sensors consuming less power. The wearables themselves may not have all the required intelligence built in them but they do interact with other devices such as mobile, computer system for further data analytic and get appropriate actions back to wearables. The fact that the devices (home appliances, electronic devices, home/building controls, health care systems) can communicate with each over wireless network such as Wifi, Blue-tooth, Blue-tooth low energy (BLE), Near Field Communication(NFC) etc.

No doubt that the wearable technology is going to make human life easier, intuitive, productive and enjoying. Some of the examples include, the wrist wearables from Fitbit, Apple Watch  telling how much calories you've burnt, your heart rate, mobile payment (Good news for people who hate to carry too many cards), Google glass putting the information right at your eye taking voice commands as input. The next version of Google glass will be smart contact lenses that monitor your glucose levels in your tears. The diagnostic wearables measure your, heart rate, ECG,  blood pressure etc. Some wearables take gestures as input for processing. The uses are unlimited and left to your imaginations.

While wearable computing is gaining popularity and having good trends, there are challenges to tackle. The power for all wearables is a major challenge. This can be little relaxed if the wearable works on BLE that may run on a coin cell. Apart from this, there can be solar powered wearables. The next challenge is that are wearables increasing our day to day work such as people need to deal with many gadgets such as computer system, phone, tablet, etc. However looking at the advantages these limitations are not severe.