The goal of the project is to create a device that can measure stress. The focus is on people with mental disabilities like dementia because these people might be unable to effectively communicate verbally. This can cause stress or irritation. Stress can be measured by many factors such as an increase in blood pressure, breath rate, heartbeat, or skin conductance. Skin conductance is a way of determining someone’s stress level by measuring the electrical impedance of the skin. This means that when someone gets stressed, they start to sweat more and thus impedance decreases.
Project description
We investigated whether it is possible to accurately measure skin conductivity and all the changes that happen throughout the day using textile electrodes. These measurements could be used to find out if person is stressed or anxious. We quickly realized that it is necessary to have some basic understanding of skin conductance and impedance, thus we did a lot of research into these topics. The next step was to design the hardware measurement setup and to develop software to analyze the acquired data.
Project results
Based on the test results, we conclude that the measuring hardware setup works, but only with medical electrodes. From our measurement results with four different sizes of textile electrodes it can be concluded that the biggest size works best with the current hardware measuring setup. We created MATLAB scripts to graph the measurement data that was recorded in excel sheets. These graphs enable detailed analysis of skin behavior. Our project results are a good starting point for future stress detection projects.