In just two weeks from now we will be welcoming many excellent speakers to our Wearable Technologies Conference 2012. With a long list of interesting conference registrants, we are expecting a truly unique networking event this year. In the run up to the conference we met our speaker Georgios Papastefanou whose presentation is called “Communicate your emotions with emotional sensing technologies”.
What is your bodymonitor project about?
Bodymonitor is a spin-off of GESIS, the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences. We developed a sensor armband – the Smartband – which can discreetly measure psychophysiological reactions and judgments of situations. Additionally, the Smartband software can process the collected data automatically and use the data for emotional monitoring or emotional characterization of medial or spatial situations.
Which parameters can be measured by the Smartband?
The Smartband measures the relevant psychophysiological parameters, skin conductivity, temperature and pulse as well as controlling parameters, air temperature, movement and the contact force of the electrode. The reason why the latter is taken into consideration particularly is to identify and remove so called artifacts of the psychophysiological parameters. Only after the removal of these can the parameters be used to identify emotional reactions.
What emotions can be measured with this method?
So called elementary emotional reactions such as stress, wellbeing, fatigue, joy and and general attention.
What are the areas of application for the Smartband?
The Smartband can be used in different areas to measure the emotional reactions of humans towards films, music and interaction with other human beings or the environment in real time without any requirement of self-observation or questioning. Only through real time measurement can current emotionally relevant characteristics of the spatial-medial surroundings be identified. It is especially useful for example, if you would like to examine whether a TV commercial is appealing or not for market research.
You will be presenting at the Wearable Technologies Conference 2012. How can people contact you if they are unable to attend the conference?
They can contact me directly via the Leibniz Institute or via our website bodymonitor.de.
What is your favorite Wearable Technologies product?
I am fascinated by the sensor technology that modern smartphones are equipped with. Already today they can serve as a direct interface between the material, physical and online world. I think a lot more will happen in this field in the future.
Registration to the conference closes in a few days. Don’t miss the Wearable Technologies Conference 2012. Register now.
