Research And Development Of Wearable Computer Oriented Electronic Map Systems

For the reason of possessing advantages like lightweight, small in size and can beworn on the body, Wearable Computer has recently becoming one of the hotdirections in computer engineering. Although still in its infancy, major companies(such as Apple, Google, RIM, etc.) have developed several wearable computerstypically with eye-glass type or wrist type. They enhance the ability in informationperception via a connection with computers or the Internet. Currently, wearablecomputer has been put into use in military, medical or other fields.The usage of embed-based devices benefits from the technology of combiningelectronic map with embedded GIS. The range of its application is extended tomilitary, transportation, mapping, medical, navigation and other fields, whichprovides a strong technical support for users to make relevant decisions. Wearablecomputer oriented electronic map system is a basic application for wearable computer.Electronic map with collaborative plotting ability not only achieves basic functionsbut also enhances environmental awareness. Thus, its synergistic pattern with othernodes in completing tasks makes it no longer an independent one. Members incollaborative group can perceive each other in joining and exiting status, operatingstatus, speech, etc.In this paper, we firstly analyze the research actuality, characteristics andtechnical background of wearable computer and embedded GIS, which provides thetechnical basis for the development of our electronic map system. Secondly, directingat the characteristics of wearable computer, such as limited display screen, limitedmemory, we finished some work in our electronic map system like system datasources selecting, complete logical framework proposing, each functional subsystemdesigning, specific partition into modules. Finally, deeply analysis technical details ofeach sub-systems in implementation. Designing test cases and completing system testprocedure of related functions. At the meantime, comparing with other recent systemwhich not related to our methods in several aspects like time display.In the specific implementation of our system, we extract MIF-format map datain Mitab library as our data source. Combining with embedded GIS technology,embed-based Linux and Qt which is a cross-platform C++GUI application framework can achieve the wearable computer oriented electronic map systemdevelopment by Qt Creator (lightweight IDE for Qt development).