Rehyb: A Conversational Virtual Coach for Physical Exercise

Research suggests that effective rehabilitation protocol must be early, intensive, and repetitive. Reduced engagement is one of the main barriers to at-home rehabilitation exercises. To promote user engagement, research has developed rehabilitation systems with game design principles. While game-based strategies have extensively been studied and have been considered effective in engaging users, we know less about the effectiveness of other engagement strategies. Prior work suggests that real-time feedback during exercise improves motivation, competitiveness, mood, and performance resulting in an engaging exercising experience. Further, a recent study involving rehabilitation professionals including physicians, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language-hearing therapists selected verbal interactions such as ‘active listening’, ‘praise’, and ‘enjoyable communication’ as the top strategies to motivate patients for rehabilitation.

This project integrates verbal interaction features into an exoskeleton-based to develop a virtual coach system that guides and provides real-time feedback on a bicep curl exercise to promote an engaging user experience. The following video clip provides an example of the system in action.

Publication

Maharjan R, Mendu S, Mariani M, Abdullah S, Hansen JP. Exploring user engagement with real-time verbal feedback from an exoskeleton-based virtual exercise coach. Digit Health. 2024 Dec 5;10:20552076241302652. doi: 10.1177/20552076241302652. PMID: 39649296; PMCID: PMC11622306.