TeamBridge: Middleware para adaptação de games e controles de reabilitação motora

Abstract

Occupational therapy and physiotherapy have been gaining support in the last few years of applied technology in games. VR devices have been used together with exergames to motivate the patient to attend the therapy, entertaining him at the same time as performing the therapy. But the consoles still do not have sensors capable of identifying all the movements required for various types of therapy, for example, the Wii can’t identify whether the player’s hand was closed or not. In this way the TEAM (Laboratory of Educational, Assistive and Multimedia Technologies) started the development of technologies and exergames for application in occupational therapy. During the development of new input devices, it was observed that with each new hardware it was necessary to modify the source code of the games already produced or to create a new game for such a device. This problem characterizes a strong coupling between hardware and exergames, as well as rework, consequently there were fully developed devices, but it was not possible to use them with an exergame. Soon the need for a tool to intermediate these artifacts was noted. This paper presents our middleware that aims to intermediate communication between VR input devices and exergames with a focus on occupational therapy. This middleware was tested with a commercial game, proving that there is no need to modify the source code. He also underwent performance testing to ensure that the player’s experience is not compromised.