Gamification in a Physical Rehabilitation Setting: Developing a Proprioceptive Training Exercise for a Wrist Robot

Proprioception or body awareness is an essential sense that aids in the neural control of movement. Proprioceptive impairments are commonly found in people with neurological conditions such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease. Such impairments are known to impact the patient’s quality of life. Robot-aided proprioceptive training has been proposed and tested to improve sensorimotor performance. However, such robot-aided exercises are implemented similar to many physical rehabilitation exercises, requiring task-specific and repetitive movements from patients. Monotonous nature of such repetitive exercises can result in reduced patient motivation, thereby, impacting treatment adherence and therapy gains. Gamification of exercises can make physical rehabilitation more engaging and rewarding. In this work, we discuss our ongoing efforts to develop a game that can accompany a robot-aided wrist proprioceptive training exercise.