CAFS: Cost-Aware Features Selection Method for Multimodal Stress Monitoring on Wearable Devices.

OBJECTIVE: Today, stress monitoring on wearable devices is challenged by the tension between high-detection accuracy and battery lifetime driven by multimodal data acquisition and processing. Limited research has addressed the classification cost on multimodal wearable sensors, particularly when the features are cost-dependent. Thus, we design a Cost-Aware Feature Selection (CAFS) methodology that trades-off between prediction-power and energy-cost for multimodal stress monitoring. METHODS: CAFS selects the most important features under different energy-constraints, which allows us to obtain energy-scalable stress monitoring models. We further propose a self-aware stress monitoring method that intelligently switches among the energy-scalable models, reducing energy consumption. RESULTS: Using CAFS methodology on experimental data and simulation, we reduce the energy-cost of the stress model designed without energy constraints up to 94.37%. We obtain 90.98% and 95.74% as the best accuracy and confidence values, respectively, on unseen data, outperforming state-of-the-art studies. Analyzing our interpretable and energy-scalable models, we showed that simple models using only heart rate (HR) or skin conductance level (SCL), confidently predict acute stress for and non-stress for , but, outside these values, a multimodal model using respiration and pulse wave's features is needed for confident classification. Our self-aware acute stress monitoring proposal saves 10x energy and provides 88.72% of accuracy on unseen data. CONCLUSION: We propose a comprehensive solution for the cost-aware acute stress monitoring design addressing the problem of selecting an optimized feature subset considering their cost-dependency and cost-constraints. Significant: Our design framework enables long-term and confident acute stress monitoring on wearable devices.

Real-Time Cognitive Workload Monitoring Based on Machine Learning Using Physiological Signals in Rescue Missions.

High levels of cognitive workload decreases human's performance and leads to failures with catastrophic outcomes in risky missions. Today, reliable cognitive workload detection presents a common major challenge, since the workload is not directly observable. However, cognitive workload affects several physiological signals that can be measured non-invasively. The main goal of this work is to develop a reliable machine learning algorithm to identify the cognitive workload induced during rescue missions, which is evaluated through drone control simulation experiments. In addition, we aim to minimize the computing resources usage while maximizing the cognitive workload detection accuracy for a reliable real-time operation. We perform an experiment in which 24 subjects played a rescue mission simulator while respiration, electrocardiogram, photoplethysmogram, and skin temperature signals were measured. State-of-the-art feature-based machine learning algorithms are investigated for cognitive workload characterization using learning curves, data augmentation, and cross-validation techniques. The best classification algorithm is selected, optimized, and the most informative features are selected. Finally, the generalization power of the optimized model is evaluated on an unseen test set. We obtain an accuracy level of 86% on the new unseen datasets using the proposed and optimized eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) algorithm. Then, we reduce the complexity of the machine learning model for future implementation on resource-constrained wearable embedded systems, by optimizing the model and selecting the 26 most important features. Overall, a generalizable and low-complexity machine learning model for cognitive workload detection based on physiological signals is presented for the first time in the literature.