Serious Game for Motion Disorders: Rehabilitation of Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Serious games have an entirely different purpose than just entertainment: they are meant to educate, make plans, help in the decision making process or, as we will see in this dissertation, enable ill and elderly people recover from their illness and disabilities. These games’ goal is to help solve problems through interactive and fun activities. They should have a benefic effect on the players, having them make a noticeable progress throughout the entire treatment. Our aim was to develop a serious game for Parkinson’s disease patients. In this dissertation we explore the use of serious games and technologies to aid patients, by improving their lifestyle, delaying or reducing drug use, while still maintaining or improving function. We also describe the disease and its normal treatments for comparison with our solution. Our methodology is based on a game developed with Unity and using Kinect, where players have to perform a series of meaningful tasks (challenges) that aim to have the benefits previously referred, while being monitored by the therapists and doctors, who also control the parameters on which the game runs, tailored to each specific patient. The main goals were achieved, with proven satisfaction and great feedback both from the patients and doctors/therapists.