I’m writing this during a time of the day that is often a bit, erm, slovenly.  I’m a morning person, so the afternoons can often be best typified by a slump in energy and alertness.  It’s so blatant as to not really require much technology to detect, but a new study from Cornell University suggests that just such technology may be on the way before long.

The researchers developed a tool that taps into the technology in our smartphones to track our alertness throughout the day.  It does this by measuring our pupil size every time we unlock our phone.  It’s a method designed to be less cumbersome than many current methods.

“Since people use their phones very frequently during the day, we were thinking we could use phones as an instrument to understand and measure their alertness,” the researchers explain. “And since people’s eyes are affected by their alertness, we were thinking that when people are looking at their phones, we could use a moment to measure their alertness at that point.”

Measuring alertness

It transpires that when we’re alert, our sympathetic nervous system makes our pupils dilate so that our eyes can taken in as much information as possible.  The reverse then occurs when we’re feeling drowsy.

The team, who believe their work can be especially useful in professions such as healthcare, were able to identify patterns of drowsiness, which they hope can better inform us as to the best time to do important work, or alternatively to allow us to modify our behavior to be alert for longer.

“If you want to get something very important done, then probably you should execute this task while you’re at the peak of your alertness; when you’re in a valley of your alertness, you can do something like rote work,” they explain. “You’ll also know the best time to take a break in order to allow your alertness or energy to go back up again.”

The technology doesn’t appear to be on the market yet, but hopefully it will be a service that will be at your finger tips before long.