A New England winter means one thing: No matter how many layers you’re bundled up in, the chill of the outside will follow. Left shivering in your cubicle? Thanks to researchers at MIT, all it will take is a tap on the wrist to raise the heat of your entire building.
Called WristQue, the low-power wristband works with sensors embedded in buildings to monitor how you feel, and then helps adjusts their lighting and temperature accordingly. The ultimate goal? To keep you happy.
Designed to be simple and unobtrusive, each WristQue only has three buttons. According toNew Scientist, two of the buttons will allow users to indicate whether they are too warm or too cold, while the third will “activate gestural controls, so users can interact with any devices nearby,” including all televisions or computers.
“People can gesture with Kinect, but it doesn’t know who you are,” said Joe Paradiso, the director of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT’s Media Lab, who’s working on the project, to New Scientist. “We’re thinking of a device that can do that, but without distracting you like PDA.”
Called WristQue, the low-power wristband works with sensors embedded in buildings to monitor how you feel, and then helps adjusts their lighting and temperature accordingly. The ultimate goal? To keep you happy.
Designed to be simple and unobtrusive, each WristQue only has three buttons. According toNew Scientist, two of the buttons will allow users to indicate whether they are too warm or too cold, while the third will “activate gestural controls, so users can interact with any devices nearby,” including all televisions or computers.
“People can gesture with Kinect, but it doesn’t know who you are,” said Joe Paradiso, the director of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT’s Media Lab, who’s working on the project, to New Scientist. “We’re thinking of a device that can do that, but without distracting you like PDA.”
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