A New Tool for Cognitive Workload Assessment in System Design Prototypes

Mental workload is an important indicator of an operator's performance when executing a certain task. As a design concept, it is fundamental for monitoring and assessing his interaction with technological devices, such as imaging systems. A bad design can affect the mental workload of the operator, and therefore, becomes useful to assess it while performing the required tasks. This work presents a tool for cognitive workload assessment that is composed of two open-source and low-cost hardware parts: an electroencephalography system and an eye-tracker. Both are synchronized via an open-source software: Lab Streaming Layer. This paper describes the architecture of the sensor system, considering also specially developed hardware and software components that were included to allow the integration of the different subsystems. In order to show the performance of the system as tool to assess some psycho-physical indicators, examples of dedicated signal processing are also presented.