Affect-Driven VR Environment for Increasing Muscle Activity in Assisted Gait Rehabilitation

Abstract

In recent years, the focus on gait therapy research has intensified, driven by a desire to enhance session efficiency. Accelerating rehabilitation timelines is imperative to accommodate a larger patient population annually. For instance, the Centro de Rehabilitacion Infantil Teleton, a prominent rehabilitation center in Mexico, operates at total capacity, leading to patient rejections. The acceleration of rehabilitation relies on encouraging patients to engage in active muscle efforts. Significant strides have been made in this direction, leveraging motivational techniques like virtual reality. However, a crucial aspect that requires attention is the customization of the environment to adapt to the evolving motivational states of patients. This personalized approach is an essential dimension that remains to be fully explored. Our research addresses this gap by introducing a rehabilitation scenario with a patient in a walking machine while immersed in a virtual reality environment and having a brain-computer interface tracking his affective states encompassing engagement, boredom, meditation, frustration, and excitement. The virtual reality environment dynamically adjusts in real-time using affect to trigger motivational stimuli. A study involving 27 participants, with 13 in the control group and 14 in the experimental group, showed the potential of this approach. The results indicate a significant improvement in the active effort for subjects in the experimental group, yielding an efficiency increase of 54.25% with a p-value below 0.05.