A game system for remote rehabilitation of cerebral palsy patients

Abstract

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a condition that affects many people and causes paralysis or disability due to brain dysfunctions. Though incurable, physical rehabilitation has proven to improve the patients' quality of life. Some of them, however, may need extra motivation to go through the rehabilitation process. Thus, to engage them in rehabilitative actions, video games, virtual reality games and robots that combine rehabilitation with play have been developed. We propose a game system targeted for rehabilitation of young CP patients and a graphical Event Recognition (ER) Authoring Tool with which a therapist can define ER rules that allow monitoring the rehabilitation progress of a patient and adjusting the therapy accordingly. Our aim is to develop a remote CP rehabilitation platform, that combines rehabilitative actions with play and employs inexpensive, off the shelf technologies that can be used with minimal supervision. This platform is targeted both at young CP patients and also therapists.