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Untimely interaction in critical moments, content that does not capture a user's attention, and missed opportunities for delivering relevant information are just some of the issues caused by ubiquitous computing devices' inability to understand their users cognitive engagement. However, current means of inferring cognitive load are, with a few exceptions, based on intrusive methods requiring physical contact of the measurement equipment and the user, thus of limited applicability in ubiquitous computing. In this paper we propose Wi-Mind, a system for remote cognitive load assessment through wireless sensing. Wi-Mind is based on a software-defined radio radar that measures sub-millimeter movements related to a person's breathing and heart beats, which, in turn allows us to infer the person's cognitive load. We built and tested the system with 23 volunteers engaged in different tasks. Initial results show that while Wi-Mind manages to detect whether one is engaged in a cognitively demanding task, the inference of the exact cognitive load level remains challenging.
Pejović et al. (Wed,) studied this question.