PhysioKit: Open-source, Low-cost Physiological Computing Toolkit for Single and Multi-user Studies

TL;DR

PhysioKit is an open-source, affordable physiological computing toolkit that enables customizable, real-time data collection and analysis for single and multi-user research, validated against research-grade sensors.

Contribution

It introduces a modular, low-cost, open-source toolkit with real-time visualization and machine learning features, facilitating physiological research and multi-user studies.

Findings

Strong agreement with research-grade sensors on heart rate metrics

Usability feedback from 44 users over 4-6 weeks

Supports multi-user and remote physiological data collection

Abstract

The proliferation of physiological sensors opens new opportunities to explore interactions, conduct experiments and evaluate the user experience with continuous monitoring of bodily functions. Commercial devices, however, can be costly or limit access to raw waveform data, while low-cost sensors are efforts-intensive to setup. To address these challenges, we introduce PhysioKit, an open-source, low-cost physiological computing toolkit. PhysioKit provides a one-stop pipeline consisting of (i) a sensing and data acquisition layer that can be configured in a modular manner per research needs, (ii) a software application layer that enables data acquisition, real-time visualization and machine learning (ML)-enabled signal quality assessment. This also supports basic visual biofeedback configurations and synchronized acquisition for co-located or remote multi-user settings. In a validation study with 16 participants, PhysioKit shows strong agreement with research-grade sensors on measuring heart rate and heart rate variability metrics data. Furthermore, we report usability survey results from 10 small-project teams (44 individual members in total) who used PhysioKit for 4-6 weeks, providing insights into its use cases and research benefits. Lastly, we discuss the extensibility and potential impact of the toolkit on the research community.