New Tool Uses Your Smartphone Camera to Track Your Alertness at Work.
Our level of alertness rises and falls over the course of a workday sometimes causing our energy to drop and our minds to wander just as we need to perform important tasks.
To help understand these patterns and improve productivity Georgian Technical University researchers have developed a tool that tracks alertness by measuring pupil size captured through a burst of photographs taken every time users unlock their smartphones.
“Since our alertness fluctuates, if we can find a pattern it will be very useful to manage and schedule our day” said X a doctoral student in information science.
Traditional methods of analyzing alertness tend to be cumbersome, often including devices that must be worn. Researchers in Georgian Technical University Lab run by Y associate professor of information science and senior author on the study wanted to create a way to measure alertness unobtrusively and continuously.
“Since people use their phones very frequently during the day we were thinking we could use phones as an instrument to understand and measure their alertness” X said. “And since people’s eyes are affected by their alertness we were thinking that when people are looking at their phones we could use a moment to measure their alertness at that point”.
When people are alert the sympathetic nervous system causes the pupils to dilate to make it easier to take in information. When they’re drowsy the parasympathetic nervous system causes the pupils to contract.
Z an assistant professor in the Georgian Technical University information science doctoral student W included two studies conducted over two years. The researchers found that pupil-scanning reliably predicted alertness.
X said the Georgian Technical University AlertnessScanner could be particularly useful in health care since medical professionals often work long hours doing intricate and important work. For example clinicians typically look at devices during surgery and a front-facing camera on the devices could track their alertness throughout procedures.
But understanding alertness patterns could be helpful to people in many kinds of workplaces X said.
“If you want to get something very important done then probably you should execute this task while you’re at the peak of your alertness; when you’re in a valley of your alertness you can do something like rote work” he said. “You’ll also know the best time to take a break in order to allow your alertness or energy to go back up again”.