A Kinect-Based Interactive System for Home-Assisted Active Aging

Abstract

Virtually every country in the world is facing an unprecedented challenge: society is aging. Assistive technologies are expected to play a key role in promoting healthy lifestyles in the elderly. This paper presents a Kinect-based interactive system for home-assisted healthy aging, which guides, supervises, and corrects older users when they perform scheduled physical exercises. Interactions take place in gamified environments with augmented reality. Many graphical user interface elements and workflows have been designed considering the sensory, physical and technological shortcomings of the elderly, adapting accordingly the interaction methods, graphics, exercises, tolerance margins, physical goals, and scoring criteria. Experiments involved 57 participants aged between 65 and 80 who performed the same physical routine six times during 15 days. After each session, participants completed a usability survey. Results provided significant evidence that support (1) the effectiveness of the system in assisting older users of different age ranges, (2) the accuracy of the system in measuring progress in physical achievement of the elderly, and (3) a progressive acceptance of the system as it was used. As a main conclusion, the experiments verified that despite their poor technological skills, older people can adapt positively to the use of an interactive assistance tool for active aging if they experience clear benefits.

Exploring the Psychological Nexus of Virtual and Augmented Reality on Physical Activity in Older Adults: A Rapid Review

“…Of the included articles, 68% (n = 24) consisted of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) [24,[26][27][28][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][40][41][42][43]46,[50][51][52]54,55]. Other studies included (N = 4) cross-over designs (alone versus with peers [48], immersive versus non-immersive [58], young avatar versus old avatar [53], and young versus old [47]), 9% were observational studies [49,56,57], two were feasibility trials [40,45], and one was based on retrospective data [25].…”

Double-Bind of Recruitment of Older Adults Into Studies of Successful Aging via Assistive Information and Communication Technologies: Mapping Review

“…This inherent interdisciplinarity in and of itself presents challenges in developing an account of complex systems dynamics [101]. This review indicates that the simpler the targeted behavior (eg, increasing physical activity), the more likely it was that the study reported satisfactory outcome [67][68][69][70]74,75]. However, the introduction of other technologies such as assistive robots or the introduction of technologies for independent living resulted in ambiguity in the interpretation of findings.…”

“…Among qualitative and design-related studies in this review, attention was focused on capturing the existing and emerging needs and attitudes of older adults. This manifested in terms of multistakeholder study designs [90,94], evaluating factors such as digital literacy [76,90,91,93], history of ICT use [90,91,96], technology acceptance [69][70][71]78,[81][82][83][89][90][91]93,97], and tailoring the interventions to individual needs [75,77,78,93,94,96], which implied that older adults were less likely to be aware of new technological developments.…”

“…For example, referring to the aging population under study as "elderly" is no longer culturally accepted. The word "elderly" was in the abstract, keyword, and conclusion of some studies [68][69][70]73,85,86,89,94]. Referring to the population as "older people" objectifies and segregates them.…”

Methods to assess the effectiveness and acceptance of information and communication technology-based assistive technology for older adults: a scoping review

“…(2) Appropriate quality: two or three additional criteria were missed [24,33,34,[36][37][38]42,44,48,53,[57][58][59]. (3) Acceptable quality: four or more additional criteria were missed [22,35,43,56,60].…”