TheraTrousers: Reactive wearable for playful therapeutic self-empowerment: Wearable for Therapeutic Exercising

Abstract

This paper introduces a smart garment for motivating children and teens to perform gait therapy exercises, while enabling them to do so at home, outdoors or otherwise outside a practitioner's facilities. Taking the shape of a pair of trousers that look and behave like sci-fi attire, the wearable connects with a similarly themed game that turns physiotherapy sessions into exciting explorations in a light-hearted science-fiction scenario. The garment includes embedded sensors and actuators, connected via embroidered conductive yarn tracks, and its overall construction was achieved using standardized industry techniques and machinery, aimed at large-scale automated production. While measuring the user's activity to detect the performance of specific movements, the wearable also reacts to these, as well as other gameplay events, as a form of feedback and positive reinforcement. The overall aim was both to increase enjoyment during and compliance to therapy routines, and to foster autonomy, self-empowerment and a positive outlook for user.