Potential of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Technologies to Promote Wellbeing in Older Adults

Abstract

Older adults face significant loss and limitations in terms of mobility, cognitive ability, and socialization. By using augmented reality and virtual reality technologies they have the potential to overcome such loss and limitations, and to eventually improve their quality of life. However, this group is often excluded in augmented reality and virtual reality deployment. Further, limited studies address their challenges when using augmented reality and virtual reality. Therefore, for a critical review of augmented reality and virtual reality for older adults, we developed a framework to evaluate related factors, including physical, social, and psychological wellbeing. Through the critical review, we identified that most augmented reality and virtual reality studies focus on physical wellbeing of older adults but also make substantial efforts to increase their psychological wellbeing. Fun factors that would motivate them are also extensively considered. Further, social isolation continues to be a significant issue for older adults, but the appropriate content to increase their social wellbeing is insufficient, although many commercial products have been developed. The contribution of the present study is to provide a contextual framework and an evaluation framework for the critical review of augmented reality and virtual reality technologies to promote wellbeing in older adults. This study also suggests the augmented reality and virtual reality research direction for studies on this group by identifying the research gap through the critical review process. Lastly, this study investigates design directions of augmented reality and virtual reality for older adults by introducing challenges and design issues that emerged through the critical review.

Virtual Reality for Neurorehabilitation and Cognitive Enhancement

“…If exposure to virtual realities is subordinate to achieving long-term personal goals, digital technologies are able to improve the overall well-being of healthy individuals [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Furthermore, technologies employing virtual realities may be helpful to older adults suffering from cognitive decline and social isolation [ 9 ], may assist neurorehabilitation of patients with stroke [ 10 ] or traumatic brain injury [ 11 ], and may even be an essential ingredient for the replacement of lost functions through an appropriate brain–computer interface (BCI) that controls robotic devices [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

A Critical Review of Smart Residential Environments for Older Adults With a Focus on Pleasurable Experience

“…The Harvey ball was used to interpret the degree to which each factor is mentioned in each paper. In case the ball is filled with black completely, it means that a specific factor is dealt with as an important factor in the paper (Han and Kim, 2018;Lee et al, 2019). Both researchers conducted a thematic analysis to identify major issues while reviewing the selected papers.…”

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Driving Phobia Disorder: System Design and Development

“…The immersive technologies, most typically referred to as virtual reality (VR) and lately also to include augmented reality (AR) enabling technologies, are popularly researched and developed to improve healthcare and treatments for physical, psychological and social wellbeing with respect to different populations and their health issues (e.g., elderly, autism spectrum disorder, PTSD, phobia, etc.) [26,27]. For example, Lee et al [24] have comprehensively reviewed VR and AR technologies developed for physical, psychological and social wellbeing of an elderly population.…”