An Exergame Solution for Personalized Multicomponent Training in Older Adults

Abstract

In addition to contributing to increased training motivation, exergames are a promising approach to counteract age-related impairments. Mobility limitations, cognitive impairment, and urinary incontinence are very common in older adults. To optimally address these conditions, exergames should include interventions for strength, balance, cognition, and pelvic floor muscle training. In this study, we develop a personalized multicomponent exergame solution for the geriatric rehabilitation of age-related impairments. The exergame can provide interventions for balance, strength, cognition, and urinary incontinence in one single session, accommodating the needs of older adults with multiple disabilities. For its development, we involved a multidisciplinary team that helped us to specify the structure and contents of the exergame considering training requirements, game design principles, and end-user characteristics. In addition to allowing the customization of the training components, the exergame includes automatic adaptation of difficulty/load, in line with player progress over time. The game mechanics ensures the fulfilment of training needs as defined by the therapist. The exergame is cross-platform compatible (web-based) and includes novel means of interaction with wearable sensors.

Visualization and Interaction Technologies in Serious and Exergames for Cognitive Assessment and Training: A Survey on Available Solutions and Their Validation

“…As participants could suffer from visual and hearing problems or have troubles with atten- tion, visual scenes have to be as simple as possible and search space should be reduced. During gameplay, simple and immediate data as a countdown timer, the number of remained chances to guess an answer, the current score or achieved goals are often shown to incentive the subject to answer as quickly and accurately as possible [3], [14], [17], [19], [20], [22], [24], [26], [28]- [31], [33], [38]- [41], [44], [49], [50], [52], [53], [71], [72], [79], [83], [96], [97], [99], [100], [106], [109], [115], [120], [124], [125], [130]- [132], [137], [138], [142], [150], [161], [164], [179], [191], [209], [211], [212], [231],…”

“…Mouse and keyboard [1], [3], [9]- [11], [18], [21], [28], [32]- [34], [38], [45], [48], [51], [54], [56], [61], [64], [68], [69], [73], [76], [80]- [85], [90], [91], [96], [98]- [100], [102]- [108],…”

“…Treadmill [94], [115], [146], [151], [217], [218] 6 Pressure sensitive plate [15], [22], [23], [88], [147], [148] 6 Cycle-ergometer [50], [111], [149], [203], [ [6], [9], [25], [29], [30], [38], [40], [46], [55], [57], [60], [66], [71], [72], [74], [85], [92], [97], [145], [150], [152]- [154], [156]- [159], [173], [176], [181], [182], [191], [196], [197], [204], [206], [211],…”

“…[77] EEG [2], [53], [75], [93], [110] Treadmill/pressure plate/cycle ergometer [22], [88], [94] [13], [19], [26], [31], [36], [37], [39], [41], [43], [44], [122]- [124], [126], [127], [3], [21], [32], [33], [48], [144], [160], [162]- [168] Touchful and body tracking [38], [40] VR Semi-Immersive Driving simulator Driving tool [170], [171]…”

VR-PEER: A Personalized Exer-Game Platform Based on Emotion Recognition

“…In this regard, the personalized exer-game addresses this issue. Several studies in the literature focused on such games, some of them are interested in static adaptation [21,22], which makes changes only at the beginning of the game, as opposed to dynamic adaptation, which allows you to adapt the game during the long period of play [17,[22][23][24][25][26][27]. Even if the adaptation is dynamic, it is according to parameters that do not really express the situation of the patient such as the score, or other systems that rely mainly on specialists to intervene in every adaptation process [20,24].…”