• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.760-767
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• 2022

This paper introduces alert fatigue and presents methods to measure alert fatigue by using physiological signals. Alert fatigue is a phenomenon that which an individual is constantly exposed to frequent alarms and becomes desensitized to them. Blind spots are one leading cause of struck-by accidents, which is one most common causes of fatal accidents on construction sites. To reduce such accidents, construction equipment is equipped with an alarm system. However, the frequent alarm is inevitable due to the dynamic nature of construction sites and the situation can lead to alert fatigue. This paper introduces alert fatigue and proposes methods to use physiological signals such as electroencephalography, electrodermal activity, and event-related potential for the measurement of alert fatigue. Specifically, this paper presents how raw data from the physiological sensors measuring such signals can be processed to measure alert fatigue. By comparing the processed physiological data to behavioral data, validity of the measurement is tested. Using preliminary experimental results, this paper validates that physiological signals can be useful to measure alert fatigue. The findings of this study can contribute to investigating alert fatigue, which will lead to lowering the struck-by accidents caused by blind spots.

• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.5-23
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• 2008

Purpose: This study aims to conduct a systematic review of the physical, psychosocial and physiological effects of Tai Chi exercise in elderly. Method: 37 articles from Medline search of foreign journals (1966-2006) were surveyed by the key words 'Tai Chi', 'Tai-chi program' and 'Tai-chi and elderly' limiting the range to age 65 or older, choosing clinical trial and randomized controlled trial research in English articles. Four articles were excluded due to methodological study, pilot study and review. The research was analyzed according to health status of the subjects, styles and forms of Tai Chi exercises, factors for physical, psychosocial and physiological measures. Result: A short forming Yang style was commonly used in chronic diseases and health for elderly. Variable outcome measures were used in Tai Chi studies relating to balance, muscle strength, walking and mobility, flexibility and cardiorespiratory function in physical measure, quality of life, depression, self-efficacy, health status, cognition and impact questionnaire in psychosocial measure, lipids, insulin resistance and hormone in physiological measure. Conclusion: Tai Chi exercise appears to have physical and psychosocial benefits and also appears to be safe for elderly and chronic diseases. It is suggested that future studies analyze statistical part of systematic reviews through meta analysis.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.163-170
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• 2013

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to provide analysis of physiological, biomechanical responses occurring from the operation to lifting or twist lifting task appears frequently in agricultural work. Methods: This study investigated the changes of physiological factors such as heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV) and biomechanical factors such as physical activity and kinetic analysis in the task of twisting at the waist while lifting. Results: Heart rates changed significantly with the workload. The result indicated that the workload of 2 kg was light intensity work, and the workload of 12 kg was hard intensity work. Physical activity increased as the workload increased both on wrist and waist. Besides, stress index of the worker increased with the workload. Dynamic load to herniated discs was analyzed using inertial sensor, and the angular acceleration and torque increased with the workload. The proposed measurement system can measure the recipient's physiological and physical signals in real-time and analyzed 3-dimensionally according to the variety of work load. Conclusions: The system we propose will be a new method to measure agricultural workers' multi-dimensional signals and analyze various farming tasks.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.169-176
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• 2018

Recently, the pop-up satellite archival tag (PSAT) is being used in studies as a method of using satellites for monitoring organisms. Because PSATs are attached directly on the organism being monitored, it is used mostly on larger species since the health of the organism is an important concern. For this reason, PSAT-based surveys are lacking in Korea with no studies on the physiological responses of organisms with PSAT attached. Accordingly, as a basic biomonitoring study using PSAT, the present study investigated the physiological changes in fish in response to the attachment of PSAT. The present study used red seabream (Pagrus major) and Korean rockfish (Sebastes schlegelii) as the experimental fish. The PSAT was attached to the muscle below the experimental fish's dorsal fin using a mono filament (n = 3). To investigate the changes in physiological responses according to PSAT attachment, blood samples were collected from all experimental fish, including the control (n = 3), at 1, 7, 14 and 21 days after the attachment. Upon blood sample collection, whole blood was used to measure hematocrit and hemoglobin levels. After separating the plasma, the separated plasma was used to measure the GOT, GPT, glucose, total protein, and cholesterol levels. Meanwhile, the plasma cortisol, superoxide dismutase, and catalase levels were measured using the ELISA method. The results showed that attaching the tag did not have any impact on the immunity and stress response of the experimental fish. The findings in this study also demonstrated the possibility of using PSAT for studying relatively smaller species living in the coastal waters of Korea.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.87-90
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• 1995

Biomechanical can physchological approaches have provided the optimum stair dimensions but physiological approach has never been used in assessing the common method of assessing the optimum stair dimension. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the validity of the physiological measure of heart rate in assessing the optimum stair dimensions. Sixteen subjects were asked to walk up three different stairs with their normal walking speed. The results showed that the physiological approach with the heart rate difference was found to be valid in assessing the optimum stair dimension. The optimum stair dimension from this study (riser length for 185 mm and tread length for 310 mm) was chosen because it was similar to optimum dimension by the psychological approach (Irvine et al., 1990).

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.27-35
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• 2004

This study has investigated a psychological status of optimal and pleasant driving condition by measuring various physiological signals using SCR(skin conductance response), PPG(peripheral plethysmograph), SKT(skin temperature) and HR(heart rate). The physiological response was measured during various simulated driving conditions. We developed a hardware and algorithm to measure and analyze the physiological response. The physiological signals has reflected the level of driver's tension or relaxation as well as the heart rate. The emotional responses of drivers were also measured and analyzed in this experiment. The result of the study can be used to design a system to enhance the driver's emotional satisfaction as well as to monitor the driver's safety and health condition.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.33 no.6 s.113
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of natural landscapes in the context of work environments. The study examined the impact of natural landscapes on urban office workers' stress reduction and cognitive performance, using physiological, psychological, and cognitive measures. One-hundred-twenty urban office workers participated in the experiments. The physiological measures used were GSR (galvanic skin response) and IBI (interbeat interval), and the psychological measure was ZIPERS (Zucherman Inventory of Personal Reactions). Cognitive performance was measured using a mental arithmetic test that had been developed by a pretest. The results from the physiological, psychological, and cognitive measures converged to indicate that the natural landscape had more beneficial effects in relieving both psychological and physiological stress and in enhancing cognitive performance of the of office workers than the city landscape. The results suggest wide applications in the fields of workers' well-being and landscape research. First, the results can provide reliable information for promoting natural landscaping in work places in order to relieve worker stress and enhance cognitive performance. Second, the results provide an example for future empirical landscape research using multiple measurements, such as psychological, physiological, and cognitive tests. Third, they can foster experimental research to investigate the relationship between stress reduction and natural landscapes.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1245-1246
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• 2022

Walkability is an indicator of how much pedestrians are willing to walk and how well a walking environment is created. As walking can promote pedestrians' mental and physical health, there has been increasing focus on improving walkability in different ways. Thus, plenty of research has been undertaken to measure walkability. When measuring walkability, there are many objective and subjective variables. Subjective variables include a feeling of safety, pleasure, or comfort, which can significantly affect perceived walkability. However, these subjective factors are difficult to measure by making the walkability index more reliant on objective and physical factors. Because many subjective variables are associated with human emotional states, understanding pedestrians' emotional states provides an opportunity to measure the subjective walkability variables more quantitatively. Pedestrians' emotions can be examined through surveys, but there are social and economic difficulties involved when conducting surveys. Recently, an increasing number of studies have employed physiological data to measure pedestrians' stress responses when navigating unpleasant environmental barriers on their walking paths. However, studies investigating the emotional states of pedestrians in the walking environment, including assessing their positive emotions felt, such as pleasure, have rarely been conducted. Using wearable devices, this study examined the various emotional states of pedestrians affected by the walking environment. Specifically, this study aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring biometric data, such as electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate variability (HRV), using wearable devices as an indicator of pedestrians' emotional states-both pleasant-unpleasant and aroused-relaxed states. To this end, various walking environments with different characteristics were set up to collect and analyze the pedestrians' biometric data. Subsequently, the subjects wearing the wearable devices were allowed to walk on the experimental paths as usual. After the experiment, the valence (i.e., pleasant or unpleasant) and arousal (i.e., activated or relaxed) scale of the pedestrians was identified through a bipolar dimension survey. The survey results were compared with many potentially relevant EDA and HRV signal features. The research results revealed the potential for physiological responses to indicate the pedestrians' emotional states, but further investigation is warranted. The research results were expected to provide a method to measure the subjective factors of walkability by measuring emotions and monitoring pedestrians' positive or negative feelings when walking to improve the walking environment. However, due to the lack of samples and other internal and external factors influencing emotions (which need to be studied further), it cannot be comprehensively concluded that the pedestrians' emotional states were affected by the walking environment.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.53-67
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• 2011

Human state in human-machine systems highly affects the overall system performance, and should be detected and monitored. Physiological cues are essential indicators of human state and useful for the purpose of monitoring. The study presented in this paper was focused on developing a bio-inspired sensing system, i.e., Nano-Skin, to non-intrusively measure physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state. The paper is presented in three parts. The first part is to analyze the relationship between human state and physiological cues, and to introduce the conceptual design of Nano-Skin. Generally, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature, operating force, blood alcohol concentration, sweat rate, and electromyography are closely related with human state. They can be measured through human-machine contact surfaces using Nano-Skin. The second part is to discuss the technologies for skin temperature measurement. The third part is to introduce the design and manufacture of the Nano-Skin for skin temperature measurement. Experiments were performed to verify the performance of the Nano-Skin in temperature measurement. Overall, the study concludes that Nano-Skin is a promising product for measuring physiological cues on human-machine contact surfaces to detect human state.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.110-116
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• 2000

The soft drink deliveries are made for a broad line of soft drink products by using a hand truck and the backpack mode of carriage. The workers usually deliver the beverages by backpack mode of carriage, because they feel safe with such a carrying method in stairways. In this study, the physiological workload of backpack carrying was investigated, especially focused on the effects of weight of load and carrying by the stairway. A laboratory experiment was conducted to measure heart rate and oxygen uptake during backpack carrying tasks, and an ergonomic guideline was proposed for such type of task based on the results of the experiment. Eight healthy male subjects performed the backpack carrying of 40kg and 60kg, (1) on the level ground, (2) upstairs and (3) downstairs. The result showed that the stairways caused the increased physiological cost, and that a carrying load of 60kg required significantly higher physiological cost as compared to carrying 40kg. Although backpack carrying has some advantages in the biomechanical aspect, it should be advised to carry a load of less than 40kg, since the task requires a very high physiological cost. During backpack carrying, it is also recommended for a delivery person to make more trips with a light load rather than to make less trips with a heavier load at one trip.