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First page or project page of “Feasibility of Embedded Photoplethysmography Sensing in Short-Duration Tactile Interactions With Pocket-Sized Robots Using IMU- and Confidence-Based Filtering” (opens in a new tab)

PaperarXiv:2608.04242

Feasibility of Embedded Photoplethysmography Sensing in Short-Duration Tactile Interactions With Pocket-Sized Robots Using IMU- and Confidence-Based Filtering

Preprint2026Added Sep 26, 2026

  • TD
  • MF

Authors: Turjja Datta, Morten Roed Frederiksen

arXiv preprint (cs.RO) · 8 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables

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First page or project page of “Feasibility of Embedded Photoplethysmography Sensing in Short-Duration Tactile Interactions With Pocket-Sized Robots Using IMU- and Confidence-Based Filtering” (opens in a new tab)

TL;DR

Ubiquitous companion robots offer a promising avenue for immediate anxiety relief in children, yet their effectiveness relies on the ability to monitor physiological states continuously and unobtrusively. Current solutions often depend on external wearables, which impose usability barriers and limit the robot's autonomy. This paper investigates the integration of an embedded photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor directly into a pocket-sized companion robot, AffectaPocket, to enable self-contained heart rate monitoring during tactile interaction.

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Abstract

Ubiquitous companion robots offer a promising avenue for immediate anxiety relief in children, yet their effectiveness relies on the ability to monitor physiological states continuously and unobtrusively. Current solutions often depend on external wearables, which impose usability barriers and limit the robot's autonomy. This paper investigates the integration of an embedded photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor directly into a pocket-sized companion robot, AffectaPocket, to enable self-contained heart rate monitoring during tactile interaction. We address the significant challenge of motion artifacts inherent in handheld usage by implementing a two-stage filtering pipeline that utilizes an onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to reject high-variance segments and a confidence-based smoothing algorithm for recovery periods. We evaluated the system against a commonly used wrist worn sensor in a Within-Subjects Study with 26 participants. Our results demonstrate that the filtering strategy significantly reduced the Mean Absolute Percentage Error and achieved statistical equivalence to the ground truth measurements (p<0.05). Analysis of short-duration interactions shows that the sensor requires stability over longer periods to converge.

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Tasks & signals

Signals

PPG

Keywords

embeddedtactileshort-durationsensing

How it works

How Method works: Setup → Method → TargetSetup: Signals (PPG); Form factor (other). Method: Method.SetupSignals: PPGSignalsPPGForm factor: otherForm factorotherMethodMethod

Cite this paper

APA

Datta, T., & Frederiksen, M. R. (2026). Feasibility of Embedded Photoplethysmography Sensing in Short-Duration Tactile Interactions With Pocket-Sized Robots Using IMU- and Confidence-Based Filtering. arXiv preprint · 8 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.04242

BibTeX

@misc{datta2026feasibility,
  title         = {{Feasibility of Embedded Photoplethysmography Sensing in Short-Duration Tactile Interactions With Pocket-Sized Robots Using IMU- and Confidence-Based Filtering}},
  author        = {Datta, Turjja and Frederiksen, Morten Roed},
  year          = {2026},
  howpublished  = {arXiv preprint · 8 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables},
  doi           = {10.48550/arXiv.2608.04242},
  eprint        = {2608.04242},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv}
}

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