Evaluation of mental and physical load using inverse regression on sinus arrhythmia scores

This paper develops a statistical mode which estimates mental and physical loads of light work from sinus arrhythmia (SA) scores. During experiments, various levels of mental and physical loads (respectively scored by information processing and finger tapping rates) were imposed on subjects and SA scores were measured from the subjects. Two methods were used in developing workload estimation model. One is an algebraic inverse function of a multivariate regression equation, where mental and physical loads are independent variables and SA scores are dependent variables. The other is a statistical multivariate inverse regression. Of the two methods, inverse function resulted in larger mean squqre error in predicting mental and physical loads. Hence, inverse regression model is recommended for precise workload estimation.