Biosignal acquisition system for stress monitoring

Abstract

In this paper, it focus on the acquisition of biosignals like electroencephalogram and heart rate and study their relation with stress levels of a person. A common day-to-day life situation of car driving and a few stress causing elements to see this relation have been picked up. We have used a car racing simulator for this purpose, with varying traffic levels, different tracks (straight and with turns) as well as varying number of opponents to vary the stress developed on the driver. These signals were procured using our hardware, then interfaced to the LabView using Atmega 16 development board. 2 Virtual Instruments were built to help in analyzing the signals acquired-(i) used to filter the ocular artifacts from EEG using RLS-wavelet method. (ii) was used to separate out the various components of the EEG signals. We further try to correlate frequency of eye-blink rate, components of EEG and their presence with the stress level developed. We found that the stress levels of a person measured in terms of eyeblink rate, heart rate showed an increase in stressful situations (increase in traffic and number of turns, crashes, introducing obstacles, etc). The various components of EEG were also separately studied to find if a person is relaxed. Finally, a statistical model was produced to combine these results and make a decision on whether a person is stressed. This line of research may be very useful to society. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.