A Thesis Towards Development of an Occupational Therapy Game System for Stroke Patients

Persons who have suffered from stroke participate in occupational therapy to help recover occupational functionality, but therapy is expensive and maximal recovery often depends on repetitive, tedious exercises to be done by patients both in therapy sessions and on their own. Often patients do not have the resources or motivation to complete the treatment required to give them the best results. This thesis is presented as part of a larger project in which we aim to enable occupational therapists to use the Looking Glass programming environment to create computer games for their patients that can be played inexpensively and effectively, both inside and outside of therapy sessions. Looking Glass will allow for occupational therapists with little or no programming background to write customized games for their patients. Through using Wii remotes and webcams to track movement and translate it to a computer game, this solution has the potential to provide a more engaging and interesting way for patients to correctly do repetitive movements without needing constant therapist supervision or expensive and complicated equipment. It also can provide highly customizable and adjustable game settings to accommodate for the wide range of impairments that can result from stroke. This thesis presents a study of the needs of occupational therapists and stroke patients who compose the user base of the project and implications for the design, the development of a webcam color tracking system to be used for movement tracking in games, and an application to be used by therapists to assign specific, patient-tailored calibrations and game levels as part of treatments and to track and organize improvement statistics. These are all key components required for the successful development of the overall project

Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

Structured Ambassador Program for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in the Preschool Setting

Adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) and developmental disabilities (DD) have multiple opportunities to participate in the community through a variety of programs. Most programs show significant benefits in immersing individuals with ID/DD in social and physical contexts. Ashley, Fossey, and Bigby (2019) explain that participation for individuals with ID/DD is influenced by motivation, abilities, and environmental conditions. The environment plays a key role in supporting or hindering occupational engagement for individuals with ID/DD (Ashley et al., 2019). The research supports the use of vocational programs, intergenerational programs, and peer mentorship to improve the quality of life for individuals with ID/DD (Janke, Purnell, Watts, & Shore, 2019). This leads to the importance of creating a supportive and inclusive environment to enable engagement and participation in occupations amongst adults with ID/DD

SUPPORTING THERAPY-CENTERED GAME DESIGN FOR BRAIN INJURY REHABILITATION

Brain injuries (BI) are a major public health issue. Many therapists who work with patients who have had a BI include games to ameliorate boredom associated with repetitive rehabilitation. However, designing effective, appropriate, and engaging games for BI therapy is challenging. The challenge is especially manifested when considering how to consolidate the different mindsets and motivations among key stakeholders; i.e., game designers and therapists. In this dissertation, I investigated the ideation, creation, and evaluation of game design patterns and a design tool, GaPBIT (Game Design Patterns for BI Therapy) that leveraged patterns to support ideation of BI therapy game concepts and facilitate communication among designers and therapists. Design patterns, originated from the work of Christopher Alexander, provide a common design language in a specific field by documenting reusable design concepts that have successfully solved recurring problems. This investigation involved four overlapping phases. In Phase One, I interviewed 11 professional game designers focused on games for health (serious games embedded with health-related goals) to explore how they perceived and approached their work. In Phase Two, I identified 25 therapy-centered game design patterns through analyzing data about game use in BI therapy. Based on those patterns, in Phase Three I created and iterated the GaPBIT prototype through user studies. In Phase Four, I conducted quasi-experimental case studies to establish the efficacy and user experience of GaPBIT in game design workshops that involved both game designers and therapists. During the design workshops, the design patterns and GaPBIT supported exploration of game design ideas and effectively facilitated discussion among designers and therapists. The results also indicated that these tools were especially beneficial for novice game designers. This work significantly promotes game design for BI rehabilitation by providing designers and therapists with easier access to the information about requirements in rehabilitation games. Additionally, this work modeled a novel research methodology for investigating domains where balancing the role of designers and other stakeholders is particularly important. Through a “practitioner-centered” process, this work also provides an exemplar of investigating technologies that directly address the information needs of professional practitioners

Markerless Vision-Based Skeleton Tracking in Therapy of Gross Motor Skill Disorders in Children

This chapter presents a research towards implementation of a computer vision system for markerless skeleton tracking in therapy of gross motor skill disorders in children suffering from mild cognitive impairment. The proposed system is based on a low-cost 3D sensor and a skeleton tracking software. The envisioned architecture is scalable in the sense that the system may be used as a stand-alone assistive tool for tracking the effects of therapy or it may be integrated with an advanced autonomous conversational agent to maintain the spatial attention of the child and to increase her motivation to undergo a long-term therapy

Adaptable videogame platform for interactive upper extremity rehabilitation

The primary objective of this work is to design a recreational rehabilitation videogame platform for customizing motivating games that interactively encourage purposeful upper extremity gross motor movements. Virtual reality (VR) technology is a popular application for rehabilitation therapies but there is a constant need for more accessible and affordable systems. We have developed a recreational VR game platform can be used as an independent therapy supplement without laboratory equipment and is inexpensive, motivating, and adaptable. The behaviors and interactive features can be easily modified and customized based on players\u27 limitations or progress. A real-time method of capturing hand movements using programmed color detection mechanisms to create the simulated virtual environments (VEs) is implemented. Color markers are tracked and simultaneously given coordinates in the VE where the player sees representations of their hands and other interacting objects whose behaviors can be customized and adapted to fit therapeutic objectives and players\u27 interests. After gross motor task repetition and involvement in the adaptable games, mobility of the upper extremities may improve. The videogame platform is expanded and optimized to allow modifications to base inputs and algorithms for object interactions through graphical user interfaces, thus providing the adaptable need in VR rehabilitation

Personalized Virtual Reality for Upper Extremity Rehabilitation: Moving from the Clinic to a Home Exercise Program

Introduction: Traditional rehabilitation does not provide adequate repetitions for maximal motor recovery in the clinic and home exercise programs (HEPs) have low compliance rates. Personalized virtual reality (PVR) is a promising low-cost therapeutic tool for improving compliance by incorporating the client's interests, abilities, and goals into a motivating and engaging intervention using internet games. Objectives: The current study aimed to develop and refine a clinic-to-home PVR intervention, determine its feasibility and usability in an outpatient rehabilitation clinic and as a HEP, and examine its effects on motivation/engagement, compliance, motor repetitions, and functional motor performance. Methods: The PVR system utilizes a Microsoft Kinect sensor to track the participants' movements, free software to translate movements to keystrokes, and free internet games. The therapist matched participants' interests to internet games, customized therapeutic movements for game play, and increased the movement thresholds for game activation as participants improved. Two participants who had strokes resulting in upper extremity (UE) hemiplegia were recruited. The participants attended outpatient occupational therapy (OT) services twice weekly. Following training, the participants used the PVR system at home in place of their UE HEP. They continued to receive traditional OT once a week and clinic-PVR once a week for 5-8 weeks. Results: The PVR intervention was successfully implemented in the clinic and the clients' homes. PVR increased motivation and treatment compliance. The clients exhibited improvements in UE active range of motion, function, symptoms, and occupational performance. Conclusion: Preliminary evidence suggests PVR can improve motivation, compliance, function, and occupational performance. However, larger scale studies and protocol refinement are necessary

PhyDSLK: a model-driven framework for generating exergames

AbstractIn recent years, we have been witnessing a rapid increase of research on exergames—i.e., computer games that require users to move during gameplay as a form of physical activity and rehabilitation. Properly balancing the need to develop an effective exercise activity with the requirements for a smooth interaction with the software system and an engaging game experience is a challenge. Model-driven software engineering enables the fast prototyping of multiple system variants, which can be very useful for exergame development. In this paper, we propose a framework, PhyDSLK, which eases the development process of personalized and engaging Kinect-based exergames for rehabilitation purposes, providing high-level tools that abstract the technical details of using the Kinect sensor and allows developers to focus on the game design and user experience. The system relies on model-driven software engineering technologies and is made of two main components: (i) an authoring environment relying on a domain-specific language to define the exergame model encapsulating the gameplay that the exergame designer has envisioned and (ii) a code generator that transforms the exergame model into executable code. To validate our approach, we performed a preliminary empirical evaluation addressing development effort and usability of the PhyDSLK framework. The results are promising and provide evidence that people with no experience in game development are able to create exergames with different complexity levels in one hour, after a less-than-two-hour training on PhyDSLK. Also, they consider PhyDSLK usable regardless of the exergame complexity