EmotiGO: Bluetooth-enabled eyewear for unobtrusive physiology-based emotion recognition

Abstract

While machines (e.g., computers, tablets, cellphones, robots) have begun to co-exist with humans and cooperatively share various tasks; they are still deficient in interpreting and responding to humans as emotional beings. Wearable biosensors that can be used for computerized emotion recognition have great potential for addressing this issue. This paper presents a novel wearable sensor - EmotiGO - for unobtrusive acquisition of a set of physiological signals, i.e., skin conductivity, photoplethysmography, and skin temperature, which can be used as autonomic readouts of emotions. EmotiGO is unobtrusive and sufficiently lightweight to be worn comfortably without interfering with the users' usual activities. EmotiGO's open software and communication protocol provide an easy way for developers to interact with the device and design custom applications. We present the architecture of the device and results from testing that verify its effectiveness against an FDA-approved system for physiological measurement.