An Empirical Study Comparing Unobtrusive Physiological Sensors for Stress Detection in Computer Work
1
Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, CA 92617, USA
2
Computational Physiology Laboratory, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004, USA
3
Perception, Sensing, and Instrumentation Laboratory, Texas AM University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sensors 2019, 19(17), 3766; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19173766
Received: 21 July 2019
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Revised: 15 August 2019
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Accepted: 28 August 2019
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Published: 30 August 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors for Affective Computing and Sentiment Analysis)
Several unobtrusive sensors have been tested in studies to capture physiological reactions to stress in workplace settings. Lab studies tend to focus on assessing sensors during a specific computer task, while in situ studies tend to offer a generalized view of sensors’ efficacy for workplace stress monitoring, without discriminating different tasks. Given the variation in workplace computer activities, this study investigates the efficacy of unobtrusive sensors for stress measurement across a variety of tasks. We present a comparison of five physiological measurements obtained in a lab experiment, where participants completed six different computer tasks, while we measured their stress levels using a chest-band (ECG, respiration), a wristband (PPG and EDA), and an emerging thermal imaging method (perinasal perspiration). We found that thermal imaging can detect increased stress for most participants across all tasks, while wrist and chest sensors were less generalizable across tasks and participants. We summarize the costs and benefits of each sensor stream, and show how some computer use scenarios present usability and reliability challenges for stress monitoring with certain physiological sensors. We provide recommendations for researchers and system builders for measuring stress with physiological sensors during workplace computer use.
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Keywords:
stress; physiology; wearables; unobtrusive sensors; thermal imaging; human–computer interaction; EDA; PPG; ECG
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MDPI and ACS Style
Akbar, F.; Mark, G.; Pavlidis, I.; Gutierrez-Osuna, R. An Empirical Study Comparing Unobtrusive Physiological Sensors for Stress Detection in Computer Work. Sensors 2019, 19, 3766. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19173766
AMA Style
Akbar F, Mark G, Pavlidis I, Gutierrez-Osuna R. An Empirical Study Comparing Unobtrusive Physiological Sensors for Stress Detection in Computer Work. Sensors. 2019; 19(17):3766. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19173766
Chicago/Turabian StyleAkbar, Fatema, Gloria Mark, Ioannis Pavlidis, and Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna. 2019. "An Empirical Study Comparing Unobtrusive Physiological Sensors for Stress Detection in Computer Work" Sensors 19, no. 17: 3766. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19173766
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