Key result
Zephyr BioHarness tracks heart rate within ~5 bpm of clinical sensors but misestimates breathing rate.
Why the study?
Emerging Air Traffic Management and avionics human-machine systems require real-time operator monitoring with reliable sensors, but performance characterisation addressing cognitive workload poses additional challenges.
Does the commercial wearable Zephyr BioHarness sensor provide accurate heart rate and breathing rate measurements compared to clinical-grade ECG and spirometry equipment during mental workload tasks?
Does the commercial wearable Zephyr BioHarness sensor provide accurate heart rate and breathing rate measurements compared to clinical-grade ECG and spirometry equipment during mental workload tasks?
The commercial Zephyr BioHarness chest strap is sufficiently accurate for heart rate monitoring during cognitive tasks in aerospace human-machine systems, but its respiratory sensor fails to reliably capture the shallow, frequent breathing associated with purely mental workload.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Supports selective heart rate monitoring with chest-strap wearables in cognitive tasks; leaves open respiratory accuracy validation against clinical standards.
Emerging Air Traffic Management (ATM) and avionics human-machine system concepts require the real-time monitoring of the human operator to support novel task assessment and system adaptation features. To realise these advanced concepts, it is essential to resort to a suite of sensors recording neurophysiological data reliably and accurately. This article presents the experimental verification and performance characterisation of a cardiorespiratory sensor for ATM and avionics applications. In particular, the processed physiological measurements from the designated commercial device are verified against clinical-grade equipment. Compared to other studies which only addressed physical workload, this characterisation was performed also looking at cognitive workload, which poses certain additional challenges to cardiorespiratory monitors. The article also addresses the quantification of uncertainty in the cognitive state estimation process as a function of the uncertainty in the input cardiorespiratory measurements. The results of the sensor verification and of the uncertainty propagation corroborate the basic suitability of the commercial cardiorespiratory sensor for the intended aerospace application but highlight the relatively poor performance in respiratory measurements during a purely mental activity.
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Pongsakornsathien et al. (2022) studied Mental workload in healthy adults for aerospace human-machine applications (n=10). Zephyr BioHarness commercial wearable cardiorespiratory sensor vs. ADInstrument PowerLab 8/30 with Dual BioAmp DB066 clinical 5-lead ECG and ADInstrument spirometer was evaluated on Measurement validity of heart rate (HR) and breathing rate (BR) against clinical-grade sensors (HR RMSE 4.852 bpm (CC 0.663, MB 3.021 bpm); BR RMSE -9.729 bpm (σ 7.394 bpm, MB -6.003 bpm)). Zephyr BioHarness achieved acceptable heart rate accuracy (RMSE 4.852 bpm, CC 0.663) but poor breathing rate accuracy (MB -6.003 bpm) against clinical sensors during mental workload tasks.
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