Arousal level classification in the ageing adult by measuring electrodermal skin conductivity

Abstract

Ambient intelligence is a suitable paradigm for developing daily life solutions including the health care domain. Many ageing adults who decide to live alone at home need constant monitoring to control their health status and quality of life. This paper introduces the description of a wearable device capable of acquiring the electrodermal activity (EDA) in order to obtain information on the arousal level of the elderly. The lightweight wearable device is placed in the wrist of the ageing adult to allow continuous monitoring of EDA signals. With the aim of triggering changes in the emotional state of the ageing adult, fifty pictures from the International Affective Picture System are used to assess the electronic device through a series of experiments. The initial results show that the overall system classifies people into two classes: calmed and stressed patients. The results show that through measuring the EDA events’ magnitudes, the ageing adults’ arousal level is classified with a global accuracy higher than 80 %.