A bracelet for determining changes in emotional state is being developed by 2nd year students of the Faculty of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the Novosibirsk State Technical University (NETI).
Alexander Sinkevich and Egor Volynkin (developers — members of the Prometheus Design Bureau of NSTU-NETI) under the guidance of Alexey Bizyaev, senior lecturer at the Department of Design and Technology of Radioelectronic Devices, are creating a bracelet that can determine a person's emotional state based on biological reactions.
The initial idea of the students was to create a bracelet for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to track stressful situations and deal with their consequences, but the potential of the device turned out to be wider: the bracelet can become an important tool for doctors, as it will help remotely monitor the condition of a patient with a disease leading to difficulties in self-regulation, for example, for people with such individual psychological characteristics as anxiety or aggression.
The principle of operation includes two stages: the first is the configuration for a specific user. The device is located on the arm, measures heart rate variability and galvanic skin reaction. The parameters of the signals are determined by influencing the user with an audio-visual sequence, causing various emotional states that are set as reference ones.
The second stage is the use of a bracelet. When wearing the bracelet, the parameters of the signals from the sensors are evaluated and compared with the reference ones. When determining a negative emotional state, in the case of people with ASD using the bracelet, the ward's attention is switched by vibrating the bracelet, and a message about the instability of the emotional state is sent to the guardian's mobile phone. This approach allows you to determine the external irritant factor in the ward and conduct a course of adaptation to the identified stimuli in specialized centers.
The "emotional" bracelet has a British counterpart, but Alexander Sinkevich noted that the main task is to create a completely domestic device that would be compact and user—friendly. In the domestic version, data is transmitted from sensors to a portable keychain in the bracelet, which is less expensive in terms of device energy consumption and more comfortable for everyday use.
The main component of the Novosibirsk students' development are pulse and sweat gland activity sensors, the totality of which is processed and transmitted to the server, where the change in emotional state is recorded by software with elements of artificial intelligence. Next, all readings are sent to the application in the phone in the form of graphs. The data from the bracelet is analyzed continuously, which makes it possible to identify even minimal deviations from the norm and constantly adapt the evaluation criteria using a built-in neural network involved in evaluating the parameters of signals from sensors. Evaluating different types of information from the bracelet will not only allow you to anticipate a stressful state, but also to prevent critical situations.
According to the developers, the bracelet can be in demand by both the professional medical community, primarily psychologists, and ordinary users who want to monitor their emotional state, as well as special services to identify triggers that potential or criminals who have already committed a crime are trying to hide.
The team is currently at the stage of developing a prototype and an appropriate application. The first product tests are in the near future.
