Publication about the SentiSock wearable

During the “7th International Conference on Cognitive Computing and Internet of Things” on July 28 in New York, Stefan de Vries presents a publication on stress recognition with the SentiSock.

This publication describes the functionality and accuracy of the SentiSock, a sensor invented and developed by Mentech to measure skin conductance on the bottom of the foot. Skin conductance is in fact one of the actors by which we can measure stress in people with dementia or severe intellectual disability. In the past, skin conductance was measured on the wrist with a wristband. Experiences in care have shown that the wristband can become uncomfortable after wearing it for a long time. In addition, there are clients who do not accept a wristband. Therefore Mentech has developed a new sensor.

For the validation of this new sensor, we set up a study in the HUME lab. Participants wore both a wristband that measures skin conductance and the SentiSock. During the experiment, math exercises were used to elicit stress and participants watched quiet movies to relax.

After collecting the data, we trained models for both sensors. The SentiSock model was able to predict as much as 83.4% accurately whether someone was stressed. From this we concluded that the SentiSock can be used excellently for stress detection. This allows us to take more comfortable long-term measurements with the SentiSock, without affecting the accuracy of the system.

Our appreciation goes to all the authors of this publication: Stefan de Vries, Reon Smits, Michalina Tataj, Mieke Ronckers, Mayra van der Pol, Fransje van Oost, Esmee Adam, Hanneke Smaling and Erwin Meinders.