These three elements were explored through three separate studies. The first involved building an application called EmoTree to gather data about emotional eating patterns. A mobile app allowed users -- all of whom self-identified as emotional eaters -- to log their mood and food intake. [...]
Okay. Aside from the fact that it's called EmoTree and someone's boss dropped the ball on that, seems like a good start.
The second area of study focussed sought to assess how useful the proposed breathing exercises were at combating stress and emotional eating through surveys. 87.5 percent of participants said that they were becoming more aware of their emotional triggers, but only 37.5 percent reported that their eating behaviours changed as a result. [...]
Makes sense.
The third part dealt involved the development of a bra-mounted wearable sensor system that gathered EKG and EDA data in order to monitor the emotional state of the wearer. The EKG sensor pads were designed to fit snugly against the ribs, while the EDA sensor was designed to sit inside the bra cap to measure, essentially, boob sweat.
[...]
The system was successful in measuring arousal (how alert or bored person is) and valence (how positive or negative emotions are) in between 73 and 75 percent of the time.
<Beevis and Butthead references go here>
Now that that's out of the way.
So, not terribly strange -- heart monitors have a similar design. And it would make sense from an engineering perspective to use existing components for the first prototype, to get a general idea for what improvements and alterations would be necessary.
The next stage of research will involve taking real-time sensor data instead of log files and trying to predict emotions and show an appropriately timed, personalised intervention.
Wait a second, this is starting to sound a little familiar....
Since conducting this research, the team has moved to testing the use of adaptive monitoring to gauge emotional stability and criminal intent on a simple scale -- called a Crime Coefficient Index (CCI). As head of the research team, Sybil Urobuchi is hopeful that they will be able to create a system capable of informing users when they are becoming emotionally unstable, recommend methods of decreasing their CCI, and inform the proper authorities when any CCI reaches potentially criminal levels.
