Wearable smart devices have many years of development history. Ideas and rudiments appeared in the 1960s, while devices with wearable smart device morphology appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. The wearable computer prototype developed by Steve manki on Apple-II 6502 computer is one of the representatives. With the rapid development of computer standardization software and hardware and Internet technology, the forms of wearable intelligent devices begin to become diversified, and gradually show important research value and application potential in many fields such as industry, medical treatment, military, education, entertainment and so on.

At the level of academic research, research institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of technology, Carnegie Mellon University, the school of engineering of the University of Tokyo and the Korean Academy of science and technology have special laboratories or research groups focusing on the research of wearable smart devices, with a number of innovative patents and technologies. Chinese scholars also carried out research on wearable smart devices in the late 1990s. In the field of institutions and related activities, the American Society of electrical and electronic engineers has established a wearable IT technology committee and a column on wearable computing in several academic journals. IEEE ISWC, an international academic conference on wearable smart devices, has held 18 sessions since it was first held in 1997.

With the support of NSFC, three national wearable computing academic conferences were hosted by China computer society, China Automation Society and China artificial intelligence society. In addition, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and China's National 863 plan have also supported a number of research and development projects related to wearable smart devices.