Virtual-GymVR: A Virtual Reality Platform for Personalized Exergames

Virtual-Gym^VR is a platform for serious exergames in virtual reality. Its purpose is to provide older adults with a fun experience, while, at the same time, encouraging them to complete their personalized exercise sessions. The platform takes as input a description of a prescribed exercise, in terms of a posture-transition grammar, and constructs personalized versions of its games by accordingly configuring the behavior of the interactive objects in these games. The game-configuration process essentially controls the placement and the interaction behavior of the games' objects so that they induce the user to adopt the proper postures, as described by the input exercise specification. At run time, the sequence of game events stimulate the user to move to the prescribed exercise postures and, thus, accomplish their own personalized exercise goals. Given the intended user population of older adults, we have designed three different Virtual-Gym^VR games with metaphors appropriate for three different types of exercises. Our initial experimentation with the Virtual-Gym^VR games indicates that the approach is promising.