Integration of psycho-physiological and behavioral indicators with ambulatory tracking for momentary indoor activity assessment

This study proposes a novel procedure for indoor activity assessment by means of continuous and quantitative measure of personal physical and mental activity, basing on contents and contexture of location and behaviors. In this article, we focused on development of an integral wearable instrument which is capable of both indoor movement tracking and monitoring of concurrent psycho-physiologically indicated mental activity. A body-mounted inertial instrument utilizing accelerometers, gyros, and a bolometer was designed to obtain feature of three-dimensional indoor locomotive behaviors. Skin resistance change by electro-dermal activity was measured as an index of emotional arousal. Potential usefulness for assessing indoor pedestrian was examined in our experiment with young male subjects. Continuous walking in a multi-story building and its mental activities were measured. Experimental results showed that the proposed method classified all type of movements across the floors successfully. The results suggested that the method feasibly identified subject's behaviors and momentary emotional responses simultaneously with detailed contents of the indoor context.