A Lifelogging Platform Towards Detecting Negative Emotions in Everyday Life using Wearable Devices

Repeated experiences of negative emotions, such as stress, anger or anxiety, can have long-term consequences for health. These episodes of negative emotion can be associated with inflammatory changes in the body, which are clinically relevant for the development of disease in the long-term. However, the development of effective coping strategies can mediate this causal chain. The proliferation of ubiquitous and unobtrusive sensor technology supports an increased awareness of those physiological states associated with negative emotion and supports the development of effective coping strategies. Smartphone and wearable devices utilise multiple on-board sensors that are capable of capturing daily behaviours in a permanent and comprehensive manner, which can be used as the basis for self-reflection and insight. However, there are a number of inherent challenges in this application, including unobtrusive monitoring, data processing, and analysis. This paper posits a mobile lifelogging platform that utilises wearable technology to monitor and classify levels of stress. A pilot study has been undertaken with six participants, who completed up to ten days of data collection. During this time, they wore a wearable device on the wrist during waking hours to collect instances of heart rate (HR) and Galvanic Skin Resistance (GSR). Preliminary data analysis was undertaken using three supervised machine learning algorithms: Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Quadratic Discriminant Analysis (QDA) and Decision Tree (DT). An accuracy of 70% was achieved using the Decision Tree algorithm