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Circus in Motion: a multimodal exergame supporting vestibular therapy for children with autism

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Abstract

Exergames are serious games that involve physical exertion and are thought of as a form of exercise by using novel input models. Exergames are promising in improving the vestibular differences of children with autism but often lack of adaptation mechanisms that adjust the difficulty level of the exergame. In this paper, we present the design and development of Circus in Motion, a multimodal exergame supporting children with autism with the practice of non-locomotor movements. We describe how the data from a 3D depth camera enables the tracking of non-locomotor movements allowing children to naturally interact with the exergame . A controlled experiment with 12 children with autism shows Circus in Motion excels traditional vestibular therapies in increasing physical activation and the number of movements repetitions. We show how data from real-time usage of Circus in Motion could be used to feed a fuzzy logic model that can adjust the difficulty level of the exergame according to each childs motor performance. We close discussing open challenges and opportunities of multimodal exergames to support motor therapeutic interventions for children with autism in the long-term.

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Notes

  1. The unconscious process of the brain to organize information detected by ones senses and allow them to respond to the situation in a purposeful manner [3].

  2. All the stakeholders with experience in vestibular therapies and motor skills development of children with autism including psychologist, physiotherapists, and clinicians.

  3. Children with autism could get used to performing the exercises in the same order, so we counterbalanced this problem by randomly selecting the exercises children with autism must practice.

  4. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40278.

  5. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40278.

  6. For simplicity of reading, we call participants to the children with autism participating in the controlled experiment.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the participants enrolled in this experiment and the researchers and the reviewers who provide helpful comments on previous versions of this document. We also thank CONACYT for students fellowships, the Jacobs Foundation and Gillian Hayes for her support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CICESE, Ensenada, Mexico

    Oscar Peña & Monica Tentori

  2. Chapman University, Orange, USA

    Franceli L. Cibrian

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  1. Oscar Peña
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Correspondence to Franceli L. Cibrian.

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Peña, O., Cibrian, F.L. & Tentori, M. Circus in Motion: a multimodal exergame supporting vestibular therapy for children with autism. J Multimodal User Interfaces 15, 283–299 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-020-00345-9

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