Development of a facial skin temperature-based methodology for non-intrusive mental workload measurement

Abstract

The research aimed at developing a non-intrusive physiological measure for mental workload using human facial skin temperature change. It demonstrated initial results in two driving experiments that showed the potential of using this physiological parameter to infer mental workload. Participants completed driving tests in a simulator in the first experiment. Results of simulator and real vehicle testing were used in a second experiment. Forehead and nose temperature were obtained via thermography. Nose temperature dropped significantly after the drives for all conditions in the simulator tests. A secondary task during driving led to higher subjective workload score and a greater nose temperature drop. Simulator drives led to a higher subjective workload score and a greater nose temperature drop than the real driving task. A significant correlation between the nose skin temperature change and the subjective workload score was yielded in both experiments. Potential applications of this research include real-time, non-intrusive, and automated mental workload assessment for advanced human-system interface development and performance prediction. © 2007 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.