iXercise: An immersive platform for exercise intervention for special needs populations

The benefits of regular physical activity are well known. In recent years, a lot of attention has been placed by the health industry on developing motivational techniques to get people to exercise — habit forming is key. In the iXercise project, we incorporate cloud computing, cloud networking, and physical computing solutions, in conjunction with innovative game design principles, to create the iXercise platform. iXercise (immersive exercise) is based on a virtual environment exergame platform that provides an adjusted intervention fitness program targeted to special needs populations. This is especially of import for the large population of special needs patients, e.g., leukemia, PTSD, obese/sedentary, and the elderly, that are unable to participate in fitness programs outside of special environments, such as medical clinics, special care residences or their homes. In this paper we describe our prototype which encourages adherence to a fitness program, by modding an existing popular video game that turns physical activity targets into in-game quests and rewards linked to individual fitness levels and performance.

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