This game helps hemiplegic patients and patients with unilateral amputation to do some rehabilitation exercises.
This project is a rehabilitation game tailored for patients recovering from hemiplegia. Players embark on a leisurely bike tour through picturesque countryside settings, utilizing hand gestures to clear obstacles along the route and propel themselves forward. The game features three distinct modes designed to stimulate muscle activity, enhance engagement, and facilitate accelerated recovery post-stroke. The primary objective is to reach the journey's end while collecting as many coins as possible. Task completion directly correlates with improvements in hand movement ability, fostering progress in rehabilitation. The immersive experience is further enhanced by serene visuals, including the tranquil twittering of birds at dawn and the captivating sight of sunlight filtering through trees and pastures. Rewards earned through task completion ensure sustained player engagement throughout the rehabilitation process.
| Date: | 05.2020 |
| Team: | Judy Young(UX Designer), Aris Lyu(Game Design/Development) |
| Platforms: | MS Windows |
| Tools: | Unity, Myo |
| Link: | Watch Videos |
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In recent years, the incidence of hemiplegia is on the increase. The aim of the game is to assist in the ongoing needs of patients requiring upper limb rehabilitation of all ages as an effective supplement to traditional therapy, meanwhile adapts to users' individual needs and increase their engagement. Through gameplay based on gesture recognition, the user recover the muscle strength, grip strength, and control ability of the upper limb muscles. Moreover, the tasks in game instead of tedious exercises makes motor rehabilitation more engaging and effective using key factors in game design like rewards and goals, and thereby improve the rehabilitation outcome.
We conducted an investigation into the background of using gaming in upper limb motor rehabilitation for individuals with hemiparesis.
The overall goal of the research is to develop a game-based rehabilitation system that could be used at all age patients' homes for long-term recovery.
We aim to find why patients are not satisfied with traditional therapy and current rehabilitation products and identify the problems.
Through on-site investigations and visits to the rehabilitation department of the hospital, we continued to improve our design plan, especially in the areas that users urgently need, the necessary player guidance, game mode selection and data display area in the interface has been added.
We conducted a survey among patients with hemiplegia that consists of 14 questions on their expectations for idea game-based rehabilitation.
According to our survey, the most desired feature is "familiarity", "Intuitive and Simple Interface", and "Recommended by Therapists".
Therapists have developed several clinical methods to indicate motor ability. We have found an evaluation index with higher accuracy for each evaluation object. To evaluate patients' performance and , we decided to use:
Our project uses "a gesture recognition method based on instantaneous EMG images" proposed by the ZJU-CAPG group. It introduces the concept of an sEMG image and conducts gesture recognition based on sEMG images with a classification scheme of a deep convolutional network. The resultant recognition a ccuracy reached reached 99.0% using simple majority voting over 40 frames with little observational latency.
Myo is a lightweight elastic armband that transmits hand gestures to a connected device via Bluetooth. Its metal contacts can measure electrical activity in users' forearm muscles.
Myo Armband features both portability and easy-to-use, suitable for various rehabilitation environment.
We decided to design a rehabilitation game system based on hand gestures recognition.
With the game, patients can carry out their routine exercises either from the rehabilitation center or remotely. The game has the effect of increasing users' self-motivation to perform tasks by creating interest and enjoyment.
Additionally, it can provide individualized treatment plans developed on the basis of sEMG analysis and following case-by-case treatment goals.
In the present work, we used Unity engine and the gesture recognition method with Myo armband to create a 3D game.
Users can manipulate the cube in the center of the screen through arm movements and different gestures.
We found that the mechanics of the game need to be more easy-to-understand. Besides, the operating should not interfere with the users‘ exercising experience.
Users can manipulate the cube in the center of the screen through arm movements and different gestures.
We found that the mechanics of the game need to be more easy-to-understand. Besides, the operating should not interfere with the users‘ exercising experience.
For each game map, we determined an resonanle duration and intensity of the treatment. Sketch for level 1:
The game system was tested live with 4 outpatients with hemiplegia.
Participants were given an explanation of the game and presented with the gestures. They first familiarized themselves with the operation and gameplay and then played several rounds. Participants had a several-minute rest after each round.
After the test, we asked users to rate how effective they think the game would be, and interviewed them how they felt about their game experience. The user feedback is summarized below.
In general, they appreciate the game-based rehabilitation systems:
To bring the game system into the routine practice of stroke rehabilitation, we need to improve it from the perspective of game design and rehabilitation, and:
