Researchers from Cornell University have developed a new app that tracks alertness by measuring pupil size, captured through a burst of photographs taken every time users unlock their smartphones.
An employee's level of alertness differs over the course of a workday, sometimes causing our energy to drop and our minds to wander just as we need to perform important tasks.
The Science Daily website cited Vincent Tseng, specializing in information science: "Since our alertness fluctuates, if we can find a pattern it will be very useful to manage and schedule our day," the German News Agency reported.
"Since people use their phones very frequently during the day, we were thinking we could use phones as an instrument to understand and measure their alertness," Tseng explained.
When people are alert, the sympathetic nervous system causes the pupils to dilate to make it easier to take in information. When they're drowsy, the parasympathetic nervous system causes the pupils to contract.
Tseng said the AlertnessScanner could be particularly useful in health care, since medical professionals often work long hours doing intricate and important work. For instance, doctors and surgeons spend long hours performing tasks that require high degrees of accuracy and concentration, and therefore any error can have serious consequences for the lives of patients, noting that a front-facing camera on the devices could track their alertness throughout procedures.
Tseng said that understanding alertness patterns could be helpful to people in many kinds of workplaces, adding that "it will be good to know the best time to take a break in order to allow your alertness or energy to go back up again."
This article has been adapted from its original source.
