A home based health-care solution for older adults using Kinect

The gradual decline in physical activity in older people may lead to multiple affections that sometimes translate into functional disability and need for assistance and home treatments. This paper proposes a self-management healt-hcare game solution for kinesiology issues that aims to increase the quality of life in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) using Kinect. The presented story line of the game aims to minimize the physic effort by offering a motivating virtual world where the patient performs kinesiology exercises. The kinesiology exercises are represented by successive body members in 3-dimensional graphics using gesture detection with Microsoft Kinect. The raw data obtained from the avatar interactions with the Kinect sensor is stored in the system database and processed to evolution and progress measurements through the amplitude and the duration of movement reaction time, the number of peak velocity, the precision of the trajectory and the potential level of negligence. The web application of the system allows to one kinesiology therapist to guide, manage and monitor many patients, in order to store the personal and medical data about patients, to configure the specific types of exercises for each user, to show statistics and to detect and notify possible issues.