Closing the loop in exergaming - Health benefits of biocybernetic adaptation in senior adults

Exergames help senior players to get physically active by promoting fun and enjoyment while exercising. However, most exergames are not designed to produce recommended levels of exercise that elicit adequate physical responses for optimal training in the aged population. In this project, we developed physiological computing technologies to overcome this issue by making real-time adaptations in a custom exergame based on recommendations for targeted heart rate (HR) levels. This biocybernetic adaptation was evaluated against conventional cardiorespiratory training in a group of active senior adults through a floor-projected exergame and a smartwatch to record HR data. Results showed that the physiologically-augmented exergame leads players to exert around 40% more time in the recommended HR levels, compared to the conventional training, avoiding over exercising and maintaining good enjoyment levels. Finally, we made available our biocybernetic adaptation software tool to enable the creation of physiological adaptive videogames, permitting the replication of our study.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Proceedings of the 6th international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2006)

The proceedings of the conferenc

Physiological-based Dynamic Difficulty Adaptation in a Theragame for Children with Cerebral Palsy

International audienceThe purpose of this research is to provide a physiological-based Dynamic Difficulty Adaptation (DDA) for rehabilitation of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). In this paper, we present all the steps of the DDA development by going through (1) the acquisition of physiological signals, (2) the extraction of the physiological signals’ features, (3) the training of a learning classifier of physiological signals' features, and (4) the implementation of the DDA in a game-based rehabilitation system. As a result, we successfully implement a physiological-based DDA based on the user affective state (anxiety and boredom)