A Real Time Attachment Free, Psycho Physiological Stress and Heart Rate Measurement System

Abstract

The challenges in the development of a system performing real time detection of physiological parameters are fundamentally aversive because of the incommodities caused by the wires and sensing attachments onto the user, making the measurement sessions uncomfortable. Another factor is that the sensing accessories influence the plausibility of the measurements. In this paper, the authors introduce a system based on a device that can acquire physiological signals from a computer user with no prerequisites, postural, kinetic, or other constraints in the environment of normal usage of the home computer for the detection of their psychosomatic state and optimally their affect and emotional responses. The authors also discuss issues that could otherwise compromise the credibility of the results. Redundancy and special adaptive and corrective algorithms have been developed to improve reliability and achieve acceptable standards of quality. Measurements include skin conductance (SC) and heart rate (HR) detected by sensors positioned on the vertical sides of a computer mouse. The system is intended for interactive educational environments, during assessment, e-learning, psychosomatic user profiling, mobile and web based interfaces, and for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) platforms.