1. Playful Stimulation against Parkinson’s Disease -
a tentative exploration
Final presentation, May 29, 2015
Adrian Hänni and Padideh Pezeshki
University of Fribourg

2. Outline Introduction Dandelion Game Rules Types of Modalities used MYO
Sphinx 4
Interfaces
Commands
CASE / CARE
Architecture
Video
Conclusion
Questions

3. Introduction Parkinson’s disease (PD) Exergames
Around 6.3 million people worldwide
Caused by the lack or reduced levels of dopamine in brain
First affect one side, then develop to both sides of body, dominant on primary side
Primary sign of PD is tremor, mostly on hands and fingers
Current treatments are medication, physiotherapy, and surgery
Exergames
Developing exergames for health care is currently a hot topic in the field of virtual rehabilitation (VRH)
We aimed to develop one for VRH of PD patients using multimodal interfaces

4. Dandelion Exergame prototype Game rules
The character is a dandelion hovering in the space
Collect blue flowers / avoid thorn flowers
Game rules
Play time 60s
Collecting blue flowers
Adds 10 points
Increases play time by 2s
An additional bonus score is added and increases by 1
Thorn flower
Subtracts 10 points
Decreases play time by 5s
Resets additional bonus score to 0

5. Types of Modalities used
Gesture
Use of gestures intends to animate patients suffering PD to perform physiotherapy exercises
Hardware: MYO gesture recognition device
Software: MYO Connect
Speech
Voice recognition as supportive alternative when certain movements cannot be performed
Microphone
Software: Sphinx 4 running on JAVA 1.7 VM

6. MYO Features Electromyographic (EMG) sensors
Accelerometer (Vector of Units of g)
Gyroscope (Vector of Degrees / Sec)
Orientation (Roll / Pitch / Yaw as Quaternion)
Requires calibration of world orientation
Drawbacks
Warm-up time (2min)
Requires every time new calibration profile for best results

7. Sphinx 4
Pure Java speech recognition library for speech recognition, to identify speakers, adapt models, and transcription
Dictionary
Grapheme to phoneme (G2P) conversion
exit EH K Z IH T
exit(2) EH G Z IH T
exit(3) EH K S AH T
Acoustic model
Provided by Sphinx data package
Set to “en-us”
Grammar
Written manually in JSpeech Grammar Format (JSGF) format public <WORDS> = ( up | down | left | right | score | help | exit | etc. ) ;

8. Interfaces Interface A Interface B MYO: Direction Voice: Speed Level
MYO: Speed Level
Voice: Direction
Both interfaces use Voice and/or electromyographic gestures for the game’s menu

9. Commands Speech Gesture Menu Screens
START / HELP / SCORE / EXIT / NEXT
Game Screen
FASTER / SLOWER / UP / DOWN / LEFT / RIGHT
SPEED <LEVEL>
<LEVEL> = FAST / MEDIUM / SLOW
Gesture
WAVE IN / WAVE OUT / FIST / FINGER SPREAD / DOUBLE TAP
<Arm direction> = UP / DOWN / LEFT / RIGHT / REST POSITION
<Arm direction> = Q<transition> = Q<rotation> * Q<rest position>^-1

10. CASE / CARE CASE CARE Exclusive
Commands are exclusive and happen one after another in the order performed
CARE
Assignment
Only FINGER SPREAD pose can set the MYO rest position
Character control
Depending on interface type, speed and direction can be performed only by one modality
Equivalence
Choice between Speech and Gesture in the Menu screens

11. Architecture

12. Video

13. Conclusion Absence of modality fusion is intended
Game is aimed to be used by patients suffering Parkinson disease
Different health conditions increase the importance of alternatives, respectively equivalence
Focus on providing equivalent inputs of different modalities, as provided by the interfaces can be considered to be beneficial
Evaluation is pending

14. Questions