Autism, environmental buffers, and wearable servers

Ubiquitous computing systems often involve infrastructure placed either on the body or in the environment. Many issues help determine equipment's optimal placement. We've developed a combined wearable and environmental infrastructure for CareLog, a prototype system for capturing and annotating the behavior of children with autism (CWA). The infrastructure features a wearable personal server, which stores each child's information, and environmental buffers - in this case Internet-isolated cameras that store audio and video streams for short intervals before removing them. If a caregiver wishes to annotate a behavior, the caregiver downloads images from these cameras to the child's personal server; otherwise, the images are irrevocably erased. CareLog demonstrates an interesting compromise between environmental and wearable infrastructures and takes advantages of some of the best attributes of each.