Earable device adapts meditation to user stress in real time
EarStreAM: A Closed-Loop Earable System for Personalized Stress-Adaptive Meditation
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Stress can be hard to manage, especially during busy workdays. The authors created EarStreAM, a device worn in the ear that continuously measures heart signals to detect when someone feels stressed. When stress is detected, it starts a meditation session tailored to the person's current state, using AI to adjust the guidance as stress levels change. This helps provide personalized support to manage stress while working.
What this means in practice
- •For office technology developers: Integrate real-time stress monitoring and meditation guidance into wearable devices tailored for demanding work environments.$Commercial implications: Enables commercial stress management earables that provide personalized meditation to office workers on demand.
- •For wearable device builders: Develop earable health devices that use in-ear sensors and AI to adapt interventions based on physiological stress signals.
Authors
Jonas Hummel, Luisa Faust, Elias Müller, Eva Bertog, Valeria Zitz, Marius Johannes Prill, Luca L. Bennardo, Luisa Weber, Tobias Röddiger, Michael Beigl
Abstract
We present EarStreAM, a closed-loop earable system for stress-adaptive meditation that integrates in-ear physiological sensing with personalized, real-time intervention. Leveraging OpenEarable 2.0's multimodal sensing, EarStreAM continuously monitors physiological signals and detects elevated stress from heart rate and heart rate variability. Upon detection, the system initiates a personalized guided meditation generated by an LLM and adapted in real time to the user's stress state. The demo offers a hands-on experience of stress-adaptive meditation in two modes: a biosignal-adaptive meditation with optional stress induction to illustrate closed-loop adaptation, and a meditation-only mode focusing on EarStreAM's generative personalization capabilities. The demo highlights how in-ear sensing, closed-loop adaptation, and personalized generative meditation can be integrated into an earable system for real-time stress support in demanding office work contexts.