Estimation of the autonomic nerve activity with facial thermogram

In this study, a technique designed to estimate of the autonomic nerve activity with a facial thermogram has been conducted a research and development. Workers feel more mental work-load (: MWL) by advanced information society. Preventing human errors and health hazards with MWL is important. Research activities about MWL, there is the method using thermogram. Thermogram can be taken by non-contact thermometer easily such as a thermography. It can take in the shop floor or life log. But the method needs to measures time-series data at all process of experiment. In addition, if a subject is out of focus of thrmography, it is difficult to estimate MWL. Therefore, measurement environment is limited. In this study, new method are proposed to estimate of the autonomic nerve activity with facial thermogram. If new method with facial thermogram can estimate MWL to high quality, it can use in various situation. Thermograms was taken when a subject solved the issue of a mental arithmetic calculation. And the proposed method has been analyzed by thermograms. As a result of this experiment, proposed method is more sensitive than past technique.