A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches.
Rosalind Wright Picard is an American scholar and inventor who is Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-founder of the startups Affectiva and Empatica.
Electronic textiles or e-textiles are fabrics that enable electronic components such as batteries, lights, sensors, and microcontrollers to be embedded in them. They are not to be confused with smart textiles, which are fabrics that have been developed with new technologies that provide added value. Many smart clothing, wearable technology, and wearable computing projects involve the use of e-textiles.
Daniela L. Rus is a roboticist and computer scientist, Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ralph Osterhout is an American inventor, designer, entrepreneur, and CEO of Osterhout Design Group (ODG). During his career he has developed a range of products spanning toys, consumer electronics, dive equipment, furniture to devices for the Department of Defense. Osterhout is named as inventor on 260 patents and patent applications. Over the course of his career, Osterhout has developed over 2,000 different products and hundreds of separate product lines for companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500s, as well as the government.
Wearable technology is any technology that is designed to be used while worn. Common types of wearable technology include smartwatches and smartglasses. Wearable electronic devices are often close to or on the surface of the skin, where they detect, analyze, and transmit information such as vital signs, and/or ambient data and which allow in some cases immediate biofeedback to the wearer.
Quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers". Quantified self practices overlap with the practice of lifelogging and other trends that incorporate technology and data acquisition into daily life, often with the goal of improving physical, mental, and emotional performance. The widespread adoption in recent years of wearable fitness and sleep trackers such as the Fitbit or the Apple Watch, combined with the increased presence of Internet of things in healthcare and in exercise equipment, have made self-tracking accessible to a large segment of the population.
TechStyle Fashion Group, formerly JustFab Inc., is an online, membership fashion retailer that has a portfolio of five direct-to-consumer brands including JustFab, FabKids, ShoeDazzle, Savage X Fenty, and Fabletics. Its brands carries selections of shoes, handbags, jewelry, lingerie, activewear, and denim. It offers a personalized shopping experience based on members' indicated fashion preferences. As of 2019 the company has over 5 million paying VIP members, earning revenues of $800 million.
Scanadu was a Silicon Valley-based company that developed new medical devices from 2011 to 2016. In June 2020, after relaunching under the name inui Health, it was acquired by the Israeli healthcare startup Healthy.io.
Hugo Barra is a Brazilian computer scientist, technology executive and entrepreneur. From 2008 to 2013, he worked in a number of product management roles at Google, including vice president and product spokesperson of its Android division. From 2013 to 2017, he worked at Xiaomi as vice president of global operations. From 2017 to 2021, he worked as vice president of Virtual Reality and head of the Oculus division at Meta Platforms. In May 2021, he left Meta to start health technology startup Detect as CEO.
Lex Machina, Inc. is a company that provides legal analytics to legal professionals. It began as an IP litigation research company and is now a division of LexisNexis. The company started as a project at Stanford University within the university's law school and computer science department before launching as a startup in Menlo Park, California. Lex Machina provides a SaaS product to legal professionals to aid in their practice, research, and business.
Ministry of Supply is an American men's and women's business wear fashion brand based in Boston. It was launched in 2012 and founded by former Massachusetts Institute of Technology students using some of the same temperature regulating material as NASA astronauts in their clothing.
Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) is a skunkworks team and in-house technology incubator, created by former DARPA director Regina Dugan. ATAP is similar to X, but works on projects, granting project leaders time—previously only two years—in which to move a project from concept to proven product. According to Dugan, the ideal ATAP project combines technology and science, requires a certain amount of novel research, and creates a marketable product. Historically, the ATAP team was born at Motorola Mobility and kept when Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo in 2014; for this reason, ATAP ideas have tended to involve mobile hardware technology.
Laura Deming is a venture capitalist whose work focuses on life extension, and using biological research to reduce or reverse the effects of aging.
Meron Gribetz is an Israeli technology entrepreneur. He was the founder and CEO of Meta, a Silicon Valley technology company that produced augmented reality products. He is currently the CEO and founder of Inner Cosmos, makers of a digital pill designed to re-balance brain networks.
Dataiku is an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning company which was founded in 2013. In December 2019, Dataiku announced that CapitalG—the late-stage growth venture capital fund financed by Alphabet Inc.—joined Dataiku as an investor and that it had achieved unicorn status. As of 2021, Dataiku is valued at $4.6 billion. Dataiku currently employs more than 1,000 people worldwide between offices in New York, Denver, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Munich, Frankfurt, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, and Dubai.
Doppler Labs was a San Francisco-based audio technology company, founded in 2013. The company designed and manufactured in-ear computing technology, including earplugs and wireless smart earbuds.
Christian T. Wentz is an American electrical engineer and entrepreneur. He is recognized for his work in engineering authenticity in electronic devices and the use of these primitives in distributed systems, developing neural interface technologies and innovation in optoelectronics, low power circuit design, wireless power and high bandwidth communication technologies.
Hello was an American technology company that sold sleep tracking devices and a sleep tracking application to help monitor sleep. The company was founded in August 2012 and shut down in June 2017.
Cindy (Hsin-Liu) Kao 高新綠 is an assistant professor at Cornell university focusing on human-centered design, computer science, and wearable technologies at Cornell University. Kao was awarded the 2021 National Science Foundation CAREER Award and SXSW Interactive Innovation Award for her wearable research technologies. Her work has been mentioned in Forbes, CNN, TIME, and WIRED.
