Estimation of Subjective Difficulty and Psychological Stress by Ambient Sensing of Desk Panel Vibrations

Abstract

: We investigate ambient sensing techniques that recognize writer's psychological states by measuring vibrations of handwriting on a desk panel using a piezoelectric contact sensor attached to its underside. In particular, we describe a technique for estimating the subjective difficulty of a question for a student as the ratio of the time duration of thinking to the total amount of time spent on the question. Through experiments, we confirm that our technique correctly recognizes whether or not a person writes something down on paper by measured vibration data at the accuracy of over 80 %, and that the order of computed subjective difficulties of three questions is coincident with that reported by the subject in 60 % of experiments. We also propose a technique to estimate a writer's psychological stress by using the standard deviation of the spectrum of the measured vibration. Results of a proof-of-concept experiment show that the proposed technique correctly estimates whether or not the subject feels stress at least 90 % of the time.

Writing‐State Classification by Ambient Sedentary Behavior Sensing in Desk Work

“…This would contribute to more efficient studying. In our previous research, we showed that the user's subjective difficulty can be recognized by the time ratio between writing and nonwriting states . The purpose of the present investigation was to discriminate between writing and nonwriting states by the user's body sway, using a sensing chair.…”

Sensing of Audience Excitation and Boredom Emotion Based on the Synchrony of Sitting Body Sway

“…(2) how interested are you? (3) how bored are you? We hypothesized the following relation between the emotional state and body sway based on our observation of the presentation audience.…”

“…In order to measure the emotional states of users, many methods using physiological metrics based on contact sensors have been employed . In recent years, an estimation method for emotional states based on ambient sensing of users without constraining them or making them aware of the process, so as to achieve environmental knowledge and ambient intelligence, has been suggested.…”

Multi-sensor-based ambient sensing system for the estimation of comfort/discomfort during desk work

“…K An estimation method based on ambient sensor information has also been proposed [5][6] [7]. Studies have investigated the estimation of discomfort felt under different lighting conditions according to information of the facial expression recognized in frontal facial images [8] and the relationship between writing speed measured using a vibration sensor attached to the back of a desk and the discomfort felt by a subject when blowing up a balloon [9].…”