Wearables and Location Tracking Technologies for Mental-State Sensing in Outdoor Environments

Abstract

Advances in commercial wearable devices are increasingly facilitating the collection and analysis of everyday physiological data. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of using such ambulatory devices for the detection of episodic changes in physiological signals as a marker for mental state in outdoor environments. A pilot study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing commercial wearables in combination with location tracking technologies. The study measured physiological signals for 15 participants, including heart rate, heart-rate variability, and skin conductance. Participants' signals were recorded during an outdoor walk that was tracked using a GPS logger. The walk was designed to pass through various types of environments including green, blue, and urban spaces as well as a more stressful road crossing. The data that was obtained was used to demonstrate how biosensors information can be contextualized and enriched using location information. Significant episodic changes in physiological signals under real-world conditions were detectable in the stressful road crossing, but not in the other types of environments. The article concludes that despite challenges and limitations of current off-the-shelf wearables, the utilization of these devices offers novel opportunities for evaluating episodic changes in physiological signals as a marker for mental state during everyday activities including in outdoor environments.

Human-Centric Data Science for Urban Studies

“…These efforts are driven by the increasing availability of a variety of affordable wearable sensors that measure a broad range of physiological parameters, such as heart rate, galvanic skin response, or skin temperature [8]. These new low-cost wearables are increasingly used in scientific studies in a variety of areas like health research [9], well-being assessment, extraction of emotion information [10], spatial emotion analysis, and stress detection [11]. However, as a new research field, caution has to be exercised as some research efforts in this direction have used wearable physiological sensors without prior investigation of the sensor's exact quality parameters; i.e., how accurately a sensor actually measures a given parameter or how reliable a sensor is at producing continuously high-quality measurement results.…”

Spatial Analysis of Moments of Stress Derived from Wearable Sensor Data

“…Most notably, wearable biosensors enable continuous monitoring of physiological conditions with high temporal resolution (Healey & Picard, 2005). The resulting data can be used for basic research, clinical application or during daily routines in real-life situations with less bias than selfreported surveys (Birenboim et al, 2019). These biosensors may be valuable tools to detect emotions as they provide high-quality data which are accurate, complete, timely, detailed, adequately portrayed and retain contextual information to support a decision-making process (Can et al, 2019).…”

“…Nowadays, the rapid development of high-performance sensor technology has led to small and flexible sensors, which are the basis for pervasive sensing approaches in urban areas (Bergner et al, 2013;Resch, 2013). Researchers have investigated stress in correlation with traffic load, noise and environmental pollution (Birenboim et al, 2019;Knöll et al, 2018). Some research efforts investigated the restorative influence of the natural environment, such as green and blue spaces, on mental stress (Helbich, 2018;Ulrich et al, 1991;Birenboim et al, 2019).…”

“…Researchers have investigated stress in correlation with traffic load, noise and environmental pollution (Birenboim et al, 2019;Knöll et al, 2018). Some research efforts investigated the restorative influence of the natural environment, such as green and blue spaces, on mental stress (Helbich, 2018;Ulrich et al, 1991;Birenboim et al, 2019). However, they still endeavour to better understand the specific environmental elements that cause urban stress.…”

“…However, they still endeavour to better understand the specific environmental elements that cause urban stress. Therefore, researchers are looking for tools that contribute to a more objective investigation of the moment-by-moment environmental exposure and its impact on health (Birenboim et al, 2019).…”