On the Handwriting Tasks’ Analysis to Detect Fatigue

Abstract

Practical determination of physical recovery after intense exercise is a challenging topic that must include mechanical aspects as well as cognitive ones because most of physical sport activities, as well as professional activities (including brain–computer interface-operated systems), require good shape in both of them. This paper presents a new online handwritten database of 20 healthy subjects. The main goal was to study the influence of several physical exercise stimuli in different handwritten tasks and to evaluate the recovery after strenuous exercise. To this aim, they performed different handwritten tasks before and after physical exercise as well as other measurements such as metabolic and mechanical fatigue assessment. Experimental results showed that although a fast mechanical recovery happens and can be measured by lactate concentrations and mechanical fatigue, this is not the case when cognitive effort is required. Handwriting analysis revealed that statistical differences exist on handwriting performance even after lactate concentration and mechanical assessment recovery. This points out a necessity of more recovering time in sport and professional activities than those measured in classic ways.

Online Handwriting, Signature and Touch Dynamics: Tasks and Potential Applications in the Field of Security and Health

“…These tasks are useful to support diagnosis of e.g. Parkinson's disease [86,85], Huntington's disease [7], essential tremor [63,80,70,27], developmental dysgraphia [31], fatigue [34], or brachial dystonia [81]. See Figure 6.…”

“…This kind of task is especially challenging for those people affected by cognitive impairment, such as dementia, mild cognitive impairment, etc. This is the case of the house drawing Archimedean spiral, meanders and straight lines -Parkinson's disease [86,85] -Huntington's disease [7] -essential tremor [63,80,70,27] -developmental dysgraphia [31] -fatigue [34] -brachial dystonia [81] Single or overlapped circles -Huntington's disease [7] -schizophrenia [9] Spring task -fatigue [34] -developmental dysgraphia [31,103] -schizophrenia [9,14] -bipolar disorder [14] -Parkinson's disease [93] -Huntington's disease [7] Rainbow task -developmental dysgraphia [31,67] Saw task -developmental dysgraphia [31] Drawing Tasks Security (user identification and verification)…”

“…In the former case, the contour component has a major role on the overall variability [47], while in the latter one all the different components could have a significance and different impact [48]. It is quite intuitive that the handwriting signal can be used for multiple purposes: handwriting recognition [89], script recognition, drawing recognition [62], health evaluation, assessment of specific learning disabilities, gender recognition [91], fatigue detection [34], emotional state recognition [57], forensic studies, writer identification (based on signature or handwriting) and signature/writer verification.…”

The Effect of Fatigue on the Performance of Online Writer Recognition

“…All the experimentation reported in this paper has been carried out using data from the Writing & Fatigue database presented in [26]. This database was built with the goal of being a tool to study the influence of the fatigue induced by physical exercise in different handwriting tasks, including signature and text.…”

“…This database was built with the goal of being a tool to study the influence of the fatigue induced by physical exercise in different handwriting tasks, including signature and text. The Writing & Fatigue database contains handwritten samples from 20 healthy young males (Refer to [26] for further details regarding the donors' selection criteria). Acquisition was carried out using a WACOM INTUOS tablet.…”