Authors:
Christos Goumopoulos
1
and
Ioannis Igoumenakis
2
Affiliations:
1
Information and Communication Systems Engineering Department, University of the Aegean, Greece
;
2
Keyword(s):
Serious Games, Elderly, Mild Cognitive Impairment, Ontology, Knowledge Engineering, Rehabilitation, Usability Study.
Abstract:
In this paper a new ontology based game platform for maintaining and recovering cognitive functions in the case of mild cognitive impairment is discussed. Leveraging on a knowledge base that specifies game rules and organizes training resources such as words, images and sounds in terms of categories, relationships and properties, a system is developed for the efficient creation of new exercises. The ontology model by organizing the material required in the patient rehabilitation process, reduces the workload of domain experts in terms of developing the practices to be applied for a subject. Employing an ontology, the main requirement is to create a model for each exercise type, whereas the platform will be responsible to synthesize the exercises by instantiating the models with the suitable resource objects automatically. In addition, the system can use the ontology to create and manage exercises by selecting the appropriate level of difficulty based on the patient's previous perform
ance, skills and preferences. The design of the ontology and the architecture of the overall game platform are presented while experiences from a pilot evaluation study assessing the perceived usability of the game platform by elderly users are reported.
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