A kickball game for ankle rehabilitation by JAVA, JNI, and VRML

This paper presents development of a virtual environment that can be applied to the ankle rehabilitation procedure. We developed a virtual football stadium to intrigue a patient, where two degree of freedom (DOF) plate-shaped object is oriented to kick a ball falling from the sky in accordance with the data from the ankle's dorisflexion/plantarflexion and inversion/eversion motion on the moving platform of the K-Platform. This Kickball Game is implemented by Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). To control virtual objects, data from the K-Platform are transmitted through the communication module implemented in C++. Java, Java Native Interface (JNI) and VRML plug-in are combined together so as to interface the communication module with the virtual environment by VRML. This game may be applied to the Active Range of Motion (AROM) exercise procedure that is one of the ankle rehabilitation procedures.