Wearable Computing for Aircraft Maintenance: Simplifying the User Interface

In this paper we present results from the realization of a wearable computing system with the goal to shorten the maintenance process in the aircraft industry. The project combines knowledge management with wearable computing to enable instant access to an electronic logbook, aircraft manuals, and experience knowledge. This research is part of an ongoing project which is carried out in cooperation with an aircraft company. The paper elaborates on user interface issues for a hybrid wearable/hand-held interface with an abstract representation to separate the application from any concrete UI. The semantic representation of maintenance data as well as clothing aspects are also addressed.