Design and pilot evaluation of competitive and cooperative exercise games for arm rehabilitation at home

Abstract

People with chronic arm impairment should exercise intensely at home after completing their clinical rehabilitation program, but frequently lack motivation. To address this issue, we present a home rehabilitation system that motivates patients by allowing them to perform arm exercises together with friends or relatives in competitive and cooperative games. Inertial sensors are used to track the patient's arm and control the game. The system was tested with seven adults with arm impairment as well as their friends or spouses. They tested four exercise games (single-player, competitive and two different cooperative games) for 3 minutes each. Of the 7 participants, 4 preferred the competitive game, 2 preferred a cooperative game, and 1 preferred to exercise alone. Competition also increased exercise intensity (measured using inertial sensors) compared to exercising alone. Though preliminary, these results indicate that competitive exercise games could improve arm rehabilitation at home for survivors of neurological and orthopedic injuries.

Figure 1

The BiMeo arm rehabilitation system. It consists of two inertial measurement units on the arm as well as a sensorized handle.

Figure 2

Different versions of the Pong game: top left - single player/competitive mode, top right – cooperative mode with shared field, bottom – cooperative mode with split field.

Figure 3

Experimental setup. An impaired participant (left) wears the BiMeo device and exercises together with an unimpaired participant (right). Together, they play different versions of the Pong exercise game.