A Robot-based Application for Physical Exercise Training

摘要

According to studies, performing physical exercise is beneficial for reducing the risk of falling in the elderly and prolonging their stay at home. In addition, regular exercising helps cognitive function and increases positive behaviour for seniors with cognitive impairment and dementia. In this paper, a fitness application integrated into a service robot is presented. Its aim is to motivate the users to perform physical training by providing relevant exercises and useful feedback on their progress. The application utilizes the robot vision system to track and recognize user movements and activities and supports multimodal interaction with the user. The paper describes the design challenges, the system architecture, the user interface and the human motion capturing module. Additionally, it discusses some results from user testing in laboratory and home-based trials.