Exergaming for balance training, transparent monitoring, and social inclusion of community-dwelling elderly

Abstract

One of the implications of aging population is the increasing need for services for elderly people, with an emphasis on earlier diagnosis and effective interventions promoting an active and healthy aging process. To face this need, the MoveCare Project develops and field-tests an innovative multi-actor platform that integrates a robotic system with environmental sensors, smart objects, a virtual community and an activity center to provide assistance, transparent monitoring and activities to the elder at home. The newness of MoveCare consists in the design of a transparent monitoring and in its social and overarching nature that envisages the cooperation of multiple actors to implement a well-accepted, personalized, and engaging platform to hinder decline in independent elderly users. This work illustrates the rationale and the implementation of transparent physical monitoring during the execution of balancetraining exergames tailored to the user performance. Different game modalities, such as playing alone, in competition, or collaboration with other elders of the virtual community will be available. Real-time and offline indicators will be extracted and analyzed to keep track of the user's profile with the aim of preventing physical and social decline.