Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects primarily motor system. Physical exercise is considered important for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) to slow down disease progression and maintain abilities and quality of life. However, people with PD often experience barriers to exercises that causes low-level adherence to exercise plans and programs. Virtual Reality (VR) is an innovative and promising technology for motor and cognitive rehabilitation. Immersive VR exergames have potential advantages by allowing for individualized skill practice in a motivating interactive environment without distractions from outside events. This paper presents an immersive virtual reality (VR) exergame aiming at motor training on fingers and hand-and-eye coordination. The results from the usability study indicate that immersive VR exergames have potential to provide motivating and engaging physical exercise for people with PD. Through this research, we hope to contribute to evidence-based design principles for task-specific immersive VR exergames for patients with Parkinson’s Disease.

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a b s t r a c tA concept called Military Utility is proposed for the study of the use of technology in military operations. The proposed concept includes a three-level structure representing key features and their detailed components. On basic level the Military Utility of a technical system, to a military actor, in a specific context, is a compound measure of the military effectiveness, of the assessed technical system's suitability to the military capability system and of the affordability. The concept is derived through conceptual analysis and is based on related concepts used in social sciences, the military domain and Systems Engineering. It is argued that the concept has qualitative explanatory powers and can support military decision-making regarding technology in forecasts, defense planning, development, utilization and the lessons learned process. The suggested concept is expected to contribute to the development of the science of Military-Technology and to be found useful to actors related to defense.

Today several nations utilise risk based approaches in military planning. However, the discussion on limitations with the approaches in regard to aspects such as uncertainties, the nature of the threat and risk to civilians is limited. The aim of this work is to identify important challenges when applying risk based approaches to military activity. This article discusses risk based approaches in general and their military applications. Five generic quality requirements on risk analysis are presented from research in risk philosophy. Two military application areas for risk analysis: military intelligence, and risk management in legal assessments are analysed in relation to the presented quality requirements on risk analysis. From the analysis it is clear that risk analysis is an integral part of the decision-making analysis and cannot be separated in time, space or organisationally from the decision-making process in general. Defining the scenario to analyse, including the time span, is a central task in risk analysis and will affect every aspect of the risk estimation. Therefore, the principles for scenario definition must be communicated and continuously updated throughout the organisation. Handling the uncertainties throughout the process is also important, especially if the aim is a resilient military system.

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