Motivate and assist elderlies' exergaming-based resistance training by a cyber-physical system

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to explore the opportunities for utilizing cyber-physical systems in the domain of supporting elderly’s active leisure activities (ALAs) and the possible way of interaction between users and cyber-physical systems. ALAs covers wide range of activities. The focused ALAs in this thesis is resistance training. Resistance training can help elderly to maintain their muscle strength which are needed for performing activities of daily living (ADL). However, elderly’s adherence to resistance training are not as high as expected. The low adherence should be more or less attributed to unenjoyable training experience. On the other hand, the training quality can hardly be guaranteed even if some elderly do participate the training. The insufficient supervision and guidance are the main reasons for poor training quality. Hiring an assistant to arrange training plan, give guidance and encouragement could be an option, but it can hardly be affordable for most of the people. So utilizing intelligent technologies could be another option. Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) is the focused paradigm of intelligent technology in the thesis. CPSs is the network integration of the components for i) sensing and monitoring the real-life process, ii) reasoning the situations and the actions to react to the situations, ii) executing the reasoned action (actuating) as well as vi) learning from the real-life process. The main advantages of cyber-physical system are i) the capabilities to address multi-faceted issues which can hardly be addressed by stand-alone system or products, ii)reacting to suddenly happened situations which can hardly be even noticed by human. The conceptualized cyber-physical system in my thesis senses and monitors three processes during users’ training: i) trajectory of joints which can indicate users’ motions, ii) facial muscle movement which can indicate users’ moods as well as iii) heart rate. On the basis of the monitored real-life process. CPSs can reason the situations like i) training quality, ii) level of enjoyment, as well as iii) level of fatigue. In the meanwhile, based on the situations, the needed reactions are reasoned, such as: i) guidance for optimizing training quality, ii)message for motivating users, as well as iii) the suggestions on dealing with fatigue. Additionally, some exergaming-based elements are also included in order to keep elderly’s long-term motivation. For example, every user have an unique avatar in virtual world, their training can lead to the growth of their avatar which allow the avatar to compete and cooperate with each other. At the end of this thesis, some general opportunities for utilizing cyber-physical systems in supporting leisure activities were extracted from the case of resistance training. The opportunities are explained in terms of three aspects: i) the characteristics of the contexts for utilizing cyber-physical systems, ii) the real-life process for sensing and monitoring, iii) the knowledge for reasoning and learning.