Development of a Home-based Augmented Reality Rehabilitation System for the Elderly with Disabilities

Ageing is accelerating rapidly worldwide. Rehabilitation services are important to maintain the quality of life of the elderly. Clinical therapists share heavy workloads to deliver professional rehabilitation services to the elderly people. Home-based rehabilitation systems are proposed to provide professional training with more flexibility at a convenient time slot and venue. However, most existing home-based rehabilitation systems only provide game for fun or a video-conference platform to have one-to-one training with a therapist. In this study, we designed a home-based augmented reality (AR) rehabilitation system which integrates more than 45 professional rehabilitation training exercises designed by physical therapists and occupational therapists, combined with real-time AR guidance to provide feedback to users’ motions. The new platform does not require the therapist to be online during the time of training and it provides real-time guidance based on users’ 3D body segment motion. A pilot trial was conducted by recruiting 10 elderly subjects with disability to receive a 20 sessions of rehabilitation training using the AR rehabilitation training system. The AR rehabilitation training system can provide an objective and comprehensive performance report for users after each exercise session, which include the score of the corresponding exercise, the curves and the measurement of the significant biomechanics data. The results showed that the system could effectively improve the joint movement and body balance. A questionnaire survey was conducted among all the subjects after they finished the training, the results showed that they were very satisfied with the AR rehabilitation system. This study demonstrates that a home-based AR rehabilitation system has the potential to be applied in clinical application to support the elderly people to improve their physical dysfunction and maintain their quality of life.