Portuguese Tradition Inspired Exergames for Older People

Strategic Tools to Promote Functional Fitness

A. Gonçalves

1,2

, J. Muñoz

1,2

, E. Gouveia

1,3

, M. S. Cameirão

1,2

and S. Bermudez i Badia

1,2

Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia, Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

Departmento de Educação Física e Desporto, Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

1 OBJECTIVES

Populations are becoming older in developed

countries with the low birth rates and increased life

expectancy. A third of the European population is

estimated to be over 65 by 2060 (European

Commission, Economic and Financial Affairs,

2012). At the same time, sedentary lifestyles are the

mortality factor worldwide (World Health

Organization).

Exergames, exercise video games, have been

under research as an application of technology that

can help older adults to keep physically active

independently, having impact in both physical and

cognitive functions (Anderson-Hanley et al., 2012;

Molina et al., 2014). In this paper, we summarize a

set of four exergames for older people that are

designed to provide functional fitness training and

can be deployed in a senior gymnasium.

2 METHODS

To produce exergames that would have a positive

and significant physical impact in our players’ life,

we started by grounding them on health

requirements. From the Senior Fitness Test

framework (Rikli and Jones, 2013), we identified the

most relevant dimensions to be trained as: motor

ability (balance, agility and flexibility), aerobic

endurance and muscular strength (lower and upper

limbs, and trunk). A set of exercises to be

incorporated in the games was developed by sport

science professionals based on these dimensions.

The technical setup of our exergames can be seen

in Figure 1, where a Kinect V2 camera is set in front

of the user to capture his/her motion and serve as

game controller. A projector is pointed to the floor

to act as display.

Through several brainstorming sessions, we

chose to develop the games under the umbrella

scenario of a national tour of Portugal, where each

game would replicate characteristics of individual

regional traditions. Three elements - health

requirements, technological setup, and scenario -

were used as foundation and a development game

jam was organized. This included the participation

of three videogame designers, three graphical artists,

two psychologists, two sport science professionals,

five programmers and three games for health

experts. A set of four game prototypes where

developed. These were tested to collect qualitative

feedback on what to improve in the prototypes with

nine users (8 females; age: M=62.3, SD=6.2) and

two trainers of an elderly gym. This feedback was

analysed and integrated into the final version of our

exergames.

Figure 1: Exergame system during one of the tests.

3 RESULTS

The following four games where developed:

Grape Stomping – Based on the Douro region of

Portugal, it is an aerobic endurance game that

recreates a grape maceration activity, intended for

wine production. This game provides an interactive

“stepable” display, presented in Figure 2 A). Grape

bunches are continuously brought into the game area

and the user must pull them into the wooden vats by

performing an arm flexion-extension. Then the user

must stomp them by repeatedly raising the knees to

an adjustable height, mimicking a march in place

exercise. Additional customization is offered by

setting the treadmill velocity, duration and cognitive

GonÃ

galves A., MuÃ

soz J., Gouveia E., CameirÃ

co M. and Bermudez i Badia S.

Portuguese Tradition Inspired Exergames for Older People - Strategic Tools to Promote Functional Fitness.

In IcSPORTS 2017 - Extended Abstracts (icSPORTS 2017), pages 6-7

Figure 2: A) Grape stomping; B) Rabelos VR; C) Toboggan; D) Exerfado.

challenges such as the presence of distractors and

the need to follow recipes of different types of

grapes.

Rabelos VR – Inspired in the Portuguese city of

Porto, this game features the historic Rabelos boats,

used to transport wine down river. Users control the

boat and must collect wine barrels from the river

side docks while avoiding obstacles, see Figure 2 B).

The main training component is upper limb

muscular strength which is promoted by the need to

do a rowing motion with the arms to keep the boat

advancing. Lateral control can be either made from

lateral movement of the player or leaning of the

trunk. To transfer the wine barrels to the boat, the

player must turn the trunk towards the dock and

make an extension-flexion movement of the elbow.

Game customization parameters are the intensity of

the rowing exercise and the distance between

obstacles.

Toboggan Ride – Is a exergame for static balance

and trunk muscular strength training inspired on the

historic two-seater wicker sledges from the city of

Funchal. The goal of the game is to drive the

toboggan downhill, collecting game points while

avoiding obstacles like pedestrians and cars, shown

in Figure 2 C). Trunk leaning is used to control the

toboggan, leaning laterally will move the toboggan

perpendicularly to the road, leaning forward or

backwards will accelerate or decelerate respectively.

Alternatively, the game can be configured to control

the toboggan through lateral user motion instead of

trunk leaning. The distance between obstacles can

also be customized.

Exerfado – A lower limbs muscular strength

training game based on the traditional Fado houses

from Lisbon. The game features a Fado house

interior as background and a piano keyboard in the

foreground, presented in Figure 2 D). Coloured

musical notes fall along the same coloured lines into

the piano keys, meanwhile the user must step on that

key when the note hits it to be successfully played.

Some notes follow the wrong tracks and are

represented in black with an arrow pointing to which

adjacent track they should be moved to; the user

must perform an arm swipe in that direction to do it.

Customization is possible by music choice,

percentage of notes to be played and their speed.

4 DISCUSSION

In this work, we present the efforts and results in

creating a suit of exergames for older adults

functional fitness promotion. Attention was given to

the exercises to be performed while playing, making

sure they were age appropriate and meaningful for

each fitness dimension of training. Additional effort

was made to create games that our target population

would be interested in playing, by choosing settings

and activities that they are attracted to and by further

adapting the games according to feedback provided

from testing sessions. The results were four

exergames ready to be deployed in a communal

space for older adults. Future work will consist in

the validation of the exergames. We want to

automatically adapt the game difficulty to players’

levels of fitness and assess the effect on functional

fitness through a controlled longitudinal study.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the Fundação para a

Ciência e Tecnologia through the AHA project

(CMUP-ERI/HCI/0046/2013), LARSyS – UID/

EEA/50009/2013 and ARDITI.

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Anderson-Hanley, C. et al., 2012. Exergaming and Older

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Am. J. Prev. Med. 42, 109–119.

doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2011.10.016

European Commission, Economic and Financial Affairs,

2012. The 2012 Ageing Report.

Molina, K.I. et al., 2014. Virtual reality using games for

improving physical functioning in older adults: a

systematic review. J. NeuroEngineering Rehabil. 11,

156. doi:10.1186/1743-0003-11-156

Rikli, R.E., Jones, C.J., 2013. Senior Fitness Test Manual.

Human Kinetics.

World Health Organization, The top 10 causes of death.

http://www.who.int/.