Persons with a neurological disorder are confronted with significantly reduced physical abilities during their daily activities. Physiotherapy, for these patients mainly provided in rehabilitation centres, utilizes tangible, real-world objects in training for the upper limbs. Only by intensely and frequently exercising, patients have a chance to sustain or enhance their functional performance. Our research explores pervasive technologies and tangible objects to provide motivating, technology-supported training systems in a residential environment for independent use by these patients. In this paper, we describe our pervasive training system 'PhysiCube', consisting of prototypes 'LiftACube' and 'ReachACube'. PhysiCube takes advantage of tangible interactions and games to provide motivating physical training for the upper limbs. An evaluation with therapists showed great appreciation for our prototypes. Reflections on the technical setup and use of tangible interaction for these pervasive rehabilitation systems in a residential setting are elaborated upon.
We present ReHoblet; a physical rehabilitation game on tablets, designed to be used in a residential setting. ReHoblet trains two gross motor movements of the upper limbs by lifting (up-down) and transporting (leftright) the tablet to control a simple platform game. By using its accelerometers and gyroscope, the tablet is capable of detecting movements made by the user and steer the interaction based on this data. A formative evaluation with five Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients and their therapists showed high appreciation for ReHoblet. Patients stated they liked ReHoblet not only to improve their physical abilities, but to train on performing technology-related tasks. Based on the results, we reflect on tablet-based games in home-based rehabilitation.
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