A Comparison of Wearable and Stationary Sensors for Stress Detection.
Abstract
To test the stress detection performance of a wear-able sensor system, the signals related to heart activity andelectrodermal activity of the Empatica E4 wristband have beencompared to stationary electrocardiogram and finger skin con-ductivity electrodes of high sampling rates during the classicallaboratory stress protocol Trier Social Stress Test. The com-parison has been done on both signal level and in terms offeatures for stress detection on a total of seven subjects. Themain results point out that the Empatica E4 wristband hada significant loss in terms of detected interbeat intervals, butthat time-domain features such as the mean heart rate andstandard deviation of the heart rate were still well estimated,with good stress discrimination power. Furthermore, the skinconductivity signals measured at different locations (wrist versusfinger) show no visual resemblance and it appears that thesignal from the Empatica E4 wristband yielded higher stressdiscrimination power than the signal measured at the fingers.