Augmented Reality-Assisted Healthcare Exercising Systems

Abstract

The number of people with low upper-extremity functions is increasing due to the sedentary lifestyle, muscular disuse, and aging of population. Therefore, healthcare exercising systems that aim to enhance upper-extremity skills are desirable. The improvement of motor functions is an ordered process, and hence, the development of an upper-extremity training plan with stages with respect to the capability of the users is an important issue. Augmented Reality (AR) -assisted motor-skills training applications have been proven to be effective. This chapter discusses the importance of providing AR-assisted healthcare exercises in stages. The chapter reviews the current AR-assisted healthcare exercising systems and makes a comparison with virtual reality-based systems as well as conventional systems. A novel AR-assisted Three-stage Healthcare Exercising system (ARTHE) is presented to demonstrate stage-based AR-assisted systems for training activities of daily living.