The Uber-badge - a Versatile Platform at the Juncture between Wearable and Social Computing

We present the design of a new badge platform for facilitating interaction in large groups of people. We have built this device to be very flexible in order to host a wide variety of interactions in the areas where wearable and social computing converge, from game environments to meetings and conventions. This badge has both RF and IR communication, a 5x9 LED display capable of presenting graphics and scrolling text that users in the vicinity can read, an onboard microphone for 12-bit audio sampling, a 12-bit audio output, a pager motor vibrator for vibratory feedback, 3 onboard processors, capacity for up to 256 MB of flash memory, provisions for connecting LCD displays, and connectors that mate into the Responsive Environments Group's Stack Sensor platform, allowing a variety of different sensors to be integrated. We describe several applications now being developed for this badge at the MIT Media Laboratory, and touch on how it was used in a multiplayer, augmented reality urban adventure hunt game in Manhattan in the summer of 2003.