Developing a Tangible Gaming Board for Post-Stroke Upper Limb Functional Training

Abstract

Low patient motivation and compliance has been reported as a main barrier to effective rehabilitation. This study aims to provide an engaging and intuitive tool to increase the motivation of elderly stroke survivors in rehabilitation program. We present a tangible gaming board for the training of upper limb gross motor and fine motor skills. 64 RGB LED rotary encoders are evenly distributed on the board into eight rows. A modular design allows for training of various hand functions with interchangeable sizes of knobs attached on the rotary encoders. Preliminary usability testing of the game "Lights Invader" with eight elderly stroke survivors suggested that the gaming board has a high acceptance rate among all the participants, the game interface is easy to understand and the game is fun to play with. User feedback on the features that need to be improved are discussed in this paper.