Contactless Physiological Data Analysis for User Quality of Life Improving by Using a Humanoid Social Robot

• Published in: Image Analysis and Processing - ICIAP 2017 Vol. 10485; pp. 696 - 706
• Main Authors: Agrigoroaie, Roxana, Tapus, Adriana
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Human-robot interaction; Physiological data; Quality of life
• ISBN: 9783319685472; 3319685473
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-68548-9_63

Robots have increasingly been used for improving the quality of life of people with special needs, such as elderly, people suffering from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and people with different physical and cognitive abilities. In this paper, we propose a method for extracting and analyzing physiological data by using contactless sensors (i.e., RGB and thermal cameras). The physiological parameters that can be analyzed are: the respiration rate, blinking rate, and the temperature variation across different regions on the face (i.e., the forehead, the nose, the perinasal region, the left and right periorbital regions, and the entire face). These parameters, together with the action units (AUs) can be indicators of the current internal state of an user. We analyze data from three different scenarios and report the results obtained.