Stress Assessment for Augmented Reality Applications Based on Head Movement Features

: Augmented reality is one of the enabling technologies of the upcoming future. Its usage in working and learning scenarios may lead to a better quality of work and training by helping the operators during the most crucial stages of processes. Therefore, the automatic detection of stress during augmented reality experiences can be a valuable support to prevent consequences on people's health and foster the spreading of this technology. In this work, we present the design of a non-invasive stress assessment approach. The proposed system is based on the analysis of the head movements of people wearing a Head Mounted Display while performing stress-inducing tasks. First, we designed a subjective experiment consisting of two stress-related tests for data acquisition. Then, a statistical analysis of head movements has been performed to determine which features are representative of the presence of stress. Finally, a stress classifier based on a combination of Support Vector Machines has been designed and trained. The proposed approach achieved promising performances thus paving the way for further studies in this research direction.