FruitGrind: Analysis, Design and Development of a Serious Game Supporting Knee Rehabilitation Using a Smartphone Attached to a Balance Board

Abstract

After a knee injury, rehabilitation is often necessary, which is usually a longer process, and requires doing exercises at home to regain lost abilities. Exercises within this domain also include using so-called balance boards, requiring patients to step onto them and keep their balance or do specific movements. These often monotonous exercises can lead to patients' non-compliance and therefore take them longer to regain their health, or in the worst case, have long-term issues. These are situations where serious games come into play - delivering entertainment to increase motivation and additional fun features to these monotonous exercises. However, in the context of current solutions for knee rehabilitation, there is a big drawback because additional setup and even (cost-intensive) hardware are required. Therefore, a new serious game was developed together with feedback from involved stakeholders (therapists and patients) also to overcome this current drawback by using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, offering an easy-to-set-up solution containing just a balance board (which people doing knee rehabilitation often already possess) and a smartphone attached to it together with a PC. The evaluation of this solution and setup showed very positive feedback. From a technical point of view, it was shown that the sensors of a plain smartphone (and its sensitivity) paired with a PC and its screen for playing are feasible and can support the knee rehabilitation process by capturing the movements while standing on the balance board.