A system design and build project on wearable computers

The Wearable Computers project at CMU exemplifies the importance of system level design as a new research theme. With the advent of rapid design methodologies and rapid fabrication technologies, it is possible to construct fully customized systems in a matter of months. Carnegie Mellon University has developed an Interdisciplinary Concurrent Design Methodology (ICDM) that takes teams of electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, industrial designers, and human computer interaction students that work with an end-user to generate a complete prototype system during a four-month long course. While the complexity of the prototype artifacts has increased by over two orders of magnitude, the total design effort has increased by less than a factor of two. A system-level approach to power/performance optimization is going to be a crucial catalyst for making wearable computers an everyday tool in reality. Energy efficiency must be considered in all phases of system design.