Wcomp: rapid application development toolkit for wearable computer based on Java

After a presentation of what lies behind the terms wearable computing (Wcomp), this paper focuses on a newly developed Wcomp approach. It is based on a rapid application development (RAD) toolkit used in order to make the creation of Java applications for wearable computer easier. This approach allows Wcomp to be easily and rapidly set up. The two key elements of this paper are the BeanBox (the RAD toolkit) and the use of the BeanBox components i.e. the software development kit (SDK). For the applications to be context-aware, special software/hardware components, able to communicate with I2C hardware sensors, were added to the SDK. This classical software architecture guarantees the reusability of basic components and underlines the relevance of this approach for the development of applications. These are consequently an assembly of functional hardware and software units. At the end of this paper, two examples of quickly-built applications are described.