CONCURRENT DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF THE NAVIGATOR WEARABLE COMPUTER-SYSTEM - THE THERMAL PERSPECTIVE

This paper describes the concurrent design of a wearable computer, cal led the Navigator, developed and built at Carnegie Mellon University i n a multidesigner, multidomain environment, The design effort for the Navigator involved nineteen designers, representing the disciplines of electrical engineering, industrial design, mechanical engineering, so ftware engineering, and human-computer interaction, The concurrent des ign framework developed by the Navigator design team is outlined and t he parallel activities within each design phase are described, includi ng the syncronization and interactions among all design disciplines at the phase boundaries, The evolution of the interdisciplinary design o f the Navigator wearable computer is presented, with particular emphas is placed upon the role of the thermal design group in the overall des ign process; Furthermore, the particular challenges associated with th e concurrent thermal management of wearable computer systems are outli ned.