Research Group for Applied Software Engineering
Forschungsgruppe für Angewandte Softwaretechnik
Bachelorthesis
A serious game for home-based stroke rehabilitation
Advisor
Sebastian Peters
Author
Patrick Hiesel, Raoul Friedrich 
Date
22.08.2013
In our research we propose a portfolio of serious games for home-based stroke rehabilitation. The game approach enriches a patient’s training experience and thus establishes a higher level of compliance to prescribed exercises, while maintaining a supportive training environment as found in common therapy sessions. Our system monitors the patient’s performance while exercising and provides clinicians with an interface to personalize the training for their patients. In order to achieve an increased compliance to home-based exercising, we provide a collection of mini games based on rehabilitation exercises used in conventional physical therapy. All games are part of a joint storyline that encourages a patient to accomplish tasks on a treasure island. Playable games change over time to adapt to the patient’s state of rehabilitation and drive diversification. This research was inspired by a previous project at Carnegie Mellon University that provides a non-gamified way of self-governed exercising. While this prototype was a major breakthrough in the domain of computer-aided rehabilitation, patients experienced difficulties using the complex interface resulting in a lack of compliance and motivation to use the system. However, to offer a non-gamified alternative of exercising to our solution, the previous system was integrated as an independent component, giving patients the choice between the two systems.