Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

The development and applications of serious games in the public services: defence and health

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.The latest advances of Virtual Reality technologies and three-dimensional graphics, as well as the developments in Gaming Technologies in the recent years, have stemmed the proliferation of Serious Games in a broader spectrum of research applications. Among the most popular areas of application are public services such as Defence and Health, where digital technologies realise new challenges and opportunities for research and development of Serious Games and for a variety of contexts. As with all games, the user engagement is elevated and apart from the entertaining aspect, Serious Games serve as a novel and promising alternative experience to knowledge transfer. Furthermore, Serious Games bring to the end user and the overall society a series of attractive benefits. These benefits include safety, cost-effectiveness, increased motivation and personalisation. Hence, this Thesis aims to investigate novel approaches of developing Serious Games that utilise the recent advances of Virtual Reality and Gaming Technology and facilitate the aforementioned benefits. The process of design and development of the novel tools and applications follow an iterative manner and are driven by the review of the available literature as well as end-user feedbackEPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ) , MOD (UK), NHS (UK

Multimodal adaptive interfaces for 3D robot-mediated upper limb neuro-rehabilitation: An overview of bio-cooperative systems

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Robotic Platforms for Assistance to People with Disabilities

People with congenital and/or acquired disabilities constitute a great number of dependents today. Robotic platforms to help people with disabilities are being developed with the aim of providing both rehabilitation treatment and assistance to improve their quality of life. A high demand for robotic platforms that provide assistance during rehabilitation is expected because of the health status of the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in countries facing major challenges to ensure the health and autonomy of their disabled population. Robotic platforms are necessary to ensure assistance and rehabilitation for disabled people in the current global situation. The capacity of robotic platforms in this area must be continuously improved to benefit the healthcare sector in terms of chronic disease prevention, assistance, and autonomy. For this reason, research about human–robot interaction in these robotic assistance environments must grow and advance because this topic demands sensitive and intelligent robotic platforms that are equipped with complex sensory systems, high handling functionalities, safe control strategies, and intelligent computer vision algorithms. This Special Issue has published eight papers covering recent advances in the field of robotic platforms to assist disabled people in daily or clinical environments. The papers address innovative solutions in this field, including affordable assistive robotics devices, new techniques in computer vision for intelligent and safe human–robot interaction, and advances in mobile manipulators for assistive tasks

Evaluation of Arm Swing Features and Asymmetry during Gait in Parkinson’s Disease Using the Azure Kinect Sensor

Arm swinging is a typical feature of human walking: Continuous and rhythmic movement of the upper limbs is important to ensure postural stability and walking efficiency. However, several factors can interfere with arm swings, making walking more risky and unstable: These include aging, neurological diseases, hemiplegia, and other comorbidities that affect motor control and coordination. Objective assessment of arm swings during walking could play a role in preventing adverse consequences, allowing appropriate treatments and rehabilitation protocols to be activated for recovery and improvement. This paper presents a system for gait analysis based on Microsoft Azure Kinect DK sensor and its body-tracking algorithm: It allows noninvasive full-body tracking, thus enabling simultaneous analysis of different aspects of walking, including arm swing characteristics. Sixteen subjects with Parkinson’s disease and 13 healthy controls were recruited with the aim of evaluating differences in arm swing features and correlating them with traditional gait parameters. Preliminary results show significant differences between the two groups and a strong correlation between the parameters. The study thus highlights the ability of the proposed system to quantify arm swing features, thus offering a simple tool to provide a more comprehensive gait assessment

XR, music and neurodiversity: design and application of new mixed reality technologies that facilitate musical intervention for children with autism spectrum conditions

This thesis, accompanied by the practice outputs,investigates sensory integration, social interaction and creativity through a newly developed VR-musical interface designed exclusively for children with a high-functioning autism spectrum condition (ASC).The results aim to contribute to the limited expanse of literature and research surrounding Virtual Reality (VR) musical interventions and Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) designed to support individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions. The author has developed bespoke hardware, software and a new methodology to conduct field investigations. These outputs include a Virtual Immersive Musical Reality Intervention (ViMRI) protocol, a Supplemental Personalised, immersive Musical Experience(SPiME) programme, the Assisted Real-time Three-dimensional Immersive Musical Intervention System’ (ARTIMIS) and a bespoke (and fully configurable) ‘Creative immersive interactive Musical Software’ application (CiiMS). The outputs are each implemented within a series of institutional investigations of 18 autistic child participants. Four groups are evaluated using newly developed virtual assessment and scoring mechanisms devised exclusively from long-established rating scales. Key quantitative indicators from the datasets demonstrate consistent findings and significant improvements for individual preferences (likes), fear reduction efficacy, and social interaction. Six individual case studies present positive qualitative results demonstrating improved decision-making and sensorimotor processing. The preliminary research trials further indicate that using this virtual-reality music technology system and newly developed protocols produces notable improvements for participants with an ASC. More significantly, there is evidence that the supplemental technology facilitates a reduction in psychological anxiety and improvements in dexterity. The virtual music composition and improvisation system presented here require further extensive testing in different spheres for proof of concept

Spinocerebellar Ataxia

This book is about spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), which is among the most challenging pathologies in the neurological landscape. It covers basic concepts, functional classification, and new approaches to medical and non-medical treatment including rehabilitation/palliative care approaches. The volume also describes a wide spectrum of generalities and particularities about various forms of clinical and genetic presentations of ACS that have life-threatening characteristics and long-standing presentation with tremendous variability in presentation and clinical severity. In addition, the book presents important aspects of cerebellar anatomy, nutrition impact, genetic subtypes, and functional classification of medical and non-medical interventions related to stem cells, rehabilitation, and palliative care

Um jogo digital em ambientes imersivos no apoio às vítimas do acidente vascular cerebral

A sociedade moderna está a testemunhar um aumento do envelhecimento médio populacional, graças à melhoria da qualidade dos serviços de saúde e de medicação. No entanto, o envelhecimento cria outros problemas como doenças físicas ou mentais com grandes taxas de incidência. O acidente vascular cerebral (AVC) é uma das doenças que afeta sobretudo a população idosa, e o processo de reabilitação é doloroso e difícil de percorrer, sendo que a forma mais eficaz de tratar o doente é na atuação rápida e eficaz da fisioterapia. O consumo de videojogos pela população sénior está a aumentar, sendo que é cada vez mais viável a introdução de novos artefactos digitais no processo de recuperação cerebral e motora pela vítima de AVC. Os programas tradicionais de recuperação para um paciente que tenha sofrido um AVC são organizados em tratamento fisioterapêutico longo e monótono, com a possibilidade de envolver tarefas domésticas desmotivadoras. No entanto existem soluções tecnológicas que monitorizam as tarefas repetitivas de movimento. O aparelho de monitorização aliado a um jogo digital tem a possibilidade de estimular o paciente nas melhorias motoras e cognitivas como uma alternativa ao tratamento fisioterapêutico tradicional. As soluções desenvolvidas até ao momento são escassas, sendo que existe uma grande margem para mudar essa realidade. O principal objetivo desta pesquisa é o de explorar caraterísticas relacionadas com o display, interface gestual, narrativa, género, estilo gráfico, dificuldade, e linguagem que um jogo digital possa ter, para complementar as sessões de fisioterapia na recuperação do AVC pela população sénior, através da criação de um protótipo experimental. Esta investigação empírica tem um carácter exploratório e tem como base a metodologia Development Research (Van den Akker, Branch, Gustafson, Nieveen, & Plomp, 1999). Os resultados indicam que o controlador de movimento – leap motion – é um dispositivo que pode ser adaptado à fisioterapia orientada ao AVC, através de movimentos específicos e contextualizados no ambiente de jogo. Adicionalmente, foi possível observar uma rejeição elevada no uso de Head Mounted Displays devido a dores oculares e perda de orientação.Modern society is witnessing a general population ageing increase in average life expectancy thanks to better health services and medication. However, ageing creates life quality problems, such has several disabilities, diseases, or mental illness with high incidence rates. Stroke patients are a main concern for such ages, and the rehabilitation process is painful and shows very small recovery improvements over time, unless treated in a fast manner. The consumption of videogames by the senior population is increasing, and it is feasible to introduce new digital artefacts for the process of recovering from brain damage and low motricity for the stroke victim. Typical rehabilitation programs for stroke patients are organized in long and monotonous physiotherapy treatment, with the possibility of involving domestic tasks, which can increase the risk of treatment withdrawal derived from low motivation. However, there are some technological solutions that can effectively help in the supervision of those repetitive tasks. A monitoring device connected to a digital game can effectively stimulate a person in cognitive and physical improvements as an alternative to traditional physiotherapy treatment. There is room for improvement in order to change the reality of stroke rehabilitation. The main objective of this research is to explore characteristics related to display, gesture interface device, narrative, genre, game art design, difficulty, and language that can be included in a digital game to complement physiotherapy sessions for stroke rehabilitation, through the creation of a functional prototype. The empirical research has an exploratory character and is based on the methodology “Development Research” (Van den Akker et al., 1999). The results indicate that the motion controller - leap motion - is a device that can be adapted to stroke-oriented physiotherapy through specific movements and contextualized in the game environment. Additionally, it was possible to observe a high rejection in the use of Head Mounted Displays due to ocular pain and orientation loss.Mestrado em Comunicação Multimédi

Model-driven Personalisation of Human-Computer Interaction across Ubiquitous Computing Applications

Personalisation is essential to Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), which focuses on a human-centred paradigm aiming to provide interaction with adaptive content, services, and interfaces towards each one of its users, according to the context of the applications’ scenarios. However, the provision of that appropriated personalised interaction is a true challenge due to different reasons, such as the user interests, heterogeneous environments and devices, dynamic user behaviour and data capture. This dissertation focuses on a model-driven personalisation solution that has the main goal of facili-tating the implementation of a personalised human-computer interaction across different Ubicomp scenarios and applications. The research reported here investigates how a generic and interoperable model for personalisation can be used, shared and processed by different applications, among diverse devices, and across different scenarios, studying how it can enrich human-computer interaction. The research started by the definition of a consistent user model with the integration of context to end in a pervasive model for the definition of personalisations across different applications. Besides the model proposal, the other key contributions within the solution are the modelling frame-work, which encapsulates the model and integrates the user profiling module, and a cloud-based platform to pervasively support developers in the implementation of personalisation across different applications and scenarios. This platform provides tools to put end users in control of their data and to support developers through web services based operations implemented on top of a personalisa-tion API, which can also be used independently of the platform for testing purposes, for instance. Several Ubicomp applications prototypes were designed and used to evaluate, at different phases, both the solution as a whole and each one of its components. Some were specially created with the goal of evaluating specific research questions of this work. Others were being developed with a pur-pose other than for personalisation evaluation, but they ended up as personalised prototypes to better address their initial goals. The process of applying the personalisation model to the design of the latter should also work as a proof of concept on the developer side. On the one hand, developers have been probed with the implementation of personalised applications using the proposed solution, or a part of it, to assess how it works and can help them. The usage of our solution by developers was also important to assess how the model and the platform respond to the developers’ needs. On the other hand, some prototypes that implement our model-driven per-sonalisation solution have been selected for end user evaluation. Usually, user testing was conducted at two different stages of the development, using: (1) a non-personalised version; (2) the final per-sonalised version. This procedure allowed us to assess if personalisation improved the human-com-puter interaction. The first stage was also important to know who were the end users and gather interaction data to come up with personalisation proposals for each prototype. Globally, the results of both developers and end users tests were very positive. Finally, this dissertation proposes further work, which is already ongoing, related to the study of a methodology to the implementation and evaluation of personalised applications, supported by the development of three mobile health applications for rehabilitation