Homecoming
Overview
An Immersive and Gamified Virtual Reality Rehabilitation System to Increase Motivation During Gait Rehabilitation Homecoming (Kern et al., 2019) is an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) rehabilitation system to increase intrinsic motivation of patients during gait rehabilitation. Our approach combines VR with traditional treadmill training to increase longterm motivation in repetitive, monotone but challenging treadmill exercises. Therefore, we integrated game mechanics and game elements such as an engaging storyline, a gamified reward system and a virtual social companion. Our approach involves the patient in the story of the small dog and his/her friends, who lost their homes during a storm. The companion accompanies the patients during the whole training session and asks them for help to recreate his home by only walking in the virtual world. The system randomly generates the virtual world at runtime and scales according to the patient’s walking ability. This ensures that patients can achieve the final goal, fulfill their assigned role, feel helpful and experience successful.
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