Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

It is known that the type of the soil can affect balance. Here we report an automatic system having: a serious game, a physical setup and an intelligent clothe designed for training users at maintaining balance over five types of soil (broken stone, stone dust, sand, concrete and wood). By using an augmented shoe and proposed navigation metaphor, in this game, the user is invited to browse a maze while standing balance over the physical grounds. During the exploration, exercises that target assessment of balance control are suggested. To insure the effectiveness of this training program, as a first step, we have tested the proposed system with six healthy persons. Results indicate that the system can detect how the type of soil affects users balance. This opens a new avenue for more ecological, automatic and low cost personal rehabilitation systems.