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Rehabilitation |
For kids with
important
disabilities, the experience of multimedia interaction with dedicated
gesture interfaces is a great moment of creativity and play... the
positive impact on their wellness and motricity proves to be important
for both the child and his/her family.
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"Soundscapes virtual interactive space" was presented in April 2008 as an ArtAbilitation workwhop.
See the description at the soundscape web site. | Training and therapy |
Exercises for physiotherapy are often
repetitive and boring to execute. Games involving body movements (like
the Sony EyeToy) can be used to motivate the trainee to perform
exercises. Therapists find the idea appealing, but they would like to
have more control on the design and execution of the exercises.
We
dispose of a variety of gaming interfaces (camera or sensors) involving
physical movement and design or adapt existing games to fit to specific
therapeutic needs. |
Virtual
Reality Exposure Therapy |
VR simulation is a
powerful
tool for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapists. Over the past 10 years
(follow link on picture), several experiments have shown that it can be
applied to various anxiety disorders.
Our research interests stand in
the development of innovative technical solutions involving more play
and creative interaction in the VRET. |
PTSD
Therapy
 Iraq
scenario |
We collaborate with
Pr.
A.Rizzo (US institute for creative technologies) on the development of
a VR application for the therapy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by
successive exposure of warriors in virtually simulated scenes of Iraq
war.
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New gaming
interfaces
PAPER:
Herbelin B., Ciger J. and Brooks A.L. (2008). Customization of gaming technology and prototyping of rehabilitation applications.
Proc. 7th International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and
Associated Technologies and Art Abilitation, Maia, PO, 8-11 Sept 2008,
pp. 211-218
Get PDF here
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Tux Racer / PPR
is a famous open source game. First we made it stereoscopic. Second, we
changed the control to be full body with camera tracking
like for eye-toy games. Another way to control the game is by using a Soundbeam
sensor.
Tux Racer |
Ever dream of
driving a
flying carpet? Our simulator uses a 6 DOFs head tracker to
control the
camera point of view and a dance mat to control the carpet. In
addition, voice
recognition allows to order the carpet to "fly", "stop", go
"slower" or "faster".
The simulator is quite immersive and requires a good sense of balance.
Magic Carpet
Magic Carpet 2
(Thanks to Margot for her kind participation)
Magic Carpet: Tony
great master :)
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The ToyRoom is a virtual
environment that you explore by flying a toy airplane. You control its
orientation by simple manipulation of a little box (containing a 3-axis
accelerometer, like in Mintendo Wii). Physics simulation
allows to hit and knock objects over. The game consist in catching as
many energy balls as possible; you locate them visualy and from the
music
they make (spatialized
sound).
The emphasise is made on the "naturalness" of the interface and the
simplicity of gaming rules; very young kids (3+) instantly feel at ease
with it !
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The
Nindendo Wii
console proposes new and natural ways to play computer games by sensing
hand movements of the players. However, the difficulty of
games
like Wii Sports
is too high for being used for rehabilitation (physiotherapy training,
handicapped children, etc.).
Therefore, we are working with the CWiid
interface library
to use Wii controllers with any game we can develop or adapt. For
example, the GPL game Neverball is great to play by orienting
a
Wii controller instead of using the mouse. |
The "Space Race" is a simple racing
game between two spaceships. The player starts behind the ennemy and
shall go through the acceleration rings few times in order to overtake
the opponent. Hitting obstacles is not fatal but slows down the
vehicle. Auditory cues help locating the oponent and the gate.
To
control the spaceship, the user holds a bar in two hands and moves it
on the side to steer and front and back to control the speed. The
tracking of the handle bar is made by stereo-vision of two reflective
markers.
| Artistic experiments |
Although we are not
pure artists, we do not forget that creativity goes hand in hand with
art.
Developing interactive performance such as Babilu volati
(left image) or creating real time visualizations of music (right) are
other ways of experimenting with original cross modal interactions
that have great potential for rehabilitation and social inclusion of
handicaped. |
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Students' projects |
Students in Medialogy
at AAUE develop computer games and virtual environments. The examples
above give an idea of the kind of projects we supervise. |
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