A serious games platform for cognitive rehabilitation with preliminary evaluation

In recent years Serious Games have evolved substantially, solving problems in diverse areas. In particular, in Cognitive Rehabilitation, Serious Games assume a relevant role. Traditional cognitive therapies are often considered repetitive and discouraging for patients and Serious Games can be used to create more dynamic rehabilitation processes, holding patients' attention throughout the process and motivating them during their road to recovery. This paper reviews Serious Games and user interfaces in rehabilitation area and details a Serious Games platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation that includes a set of features such as: natural and multimodal user interfaces and social features (competition, collaboration, and handicapping) which can contribute to augment the motivation of patients during the rehabilitation process. The web platform was tested with healthy subjects. Results of this preliminary evaluation show the motivation and the interest of the participants by playing the games.- This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia in the scope of the projects: PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2015 and PEst-UID/CEC/00027/2015. The authors would like to thank also all the volunteers that participated in the study

GESTURE RECOGNITION RESEARCH FOR HUMAN-MACHINE SYMBIOTIC ENVIRONMENT

ABSTRACT: The drastic increase in computing performance of mobile sensing devices will soon trigger emergence and permeation of ubiquitous computing technologies. Breakthroughs in hardware technology are already demanding novel applications for intelligent robots, security, telemedicine, and virtual reality. Gesture recognition technology that enables the recognition of human natural behaviors in both real and virtual worlds can play important roles and will become indispensable in our future lives. Gesture recognition research is a field that attempts to make computers understand human intentions and body configurations through visual observations of their behaviors and activities. It can contribute as a human interface in both real and virtual worlds. 1