Wearable biosensors have the potential to non-invasively and continuously monitor seniors' stress in their daily interaction with the urban environment, thereby enabling to address the stress and ultimately advance their outdoor mobility. However, current wearable biosensor-based stress detection methods have several drawbacks in field application due to their dependence on batch-learning algorithms. First, these methods train a single classifier, which might not account for multiple subjects' different physiological reactivity to stress. Second, they require a great deal of computational power to store and reuse all previous data for updating the signle classifier. To address this issue, we tested the feasibility of online multi-task learning (OMTL) algorithms to identify multiple seniors' stress from electrodermal activity (EDA) collected by a wristband-type biosensor in a daily trip setting. As a result, OMTL algorithms showed the higher test accuracy (75.7%, 76.2%, and 71.2%) than a batch-learning algorithm (64.8%). This finding demonstrates that the OMTL algorithms can strengthen the field applicability of the wearable biosensor-based stress detection, thereby contributing to better understanding the seniors' stress in the urban environment and ultimately advancing their mobility.
This study was supported by the Exercise and Sport Science Initiative (ESSI-2018-4), and the Urban Collaboratory in the University of Michigan. Also, the authors wish to acknowledge Brenda Stumbo, Ypsilanti Township Supervisor, and Denise M. McKalpain, Service Coordinator at Clark East Tower for their help in data collection.