2021 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Para-esports: defining player motor and cognitive performance metrics and creating competitive-gaming interfaces for amputees
| Project/Area Number |
21H03475
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| Research Institution | University of Tsukuba |
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Principal Investigator |
Hassan Modar 筑波大学, システム情報系, 助教 (20830201)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
清水 如代 筑波大学, 医学医療系, 准教授 (40620993)
松田 壮一郎 筑波大学, 人間系, 助教 (90762675)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Para-esports / prosthetics / human augmentation |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
We investigated prosthetic controller technology to enable para-esports for persons with unilateral upper limb deformation/amputation. This technology is based on the human motor system capacity to transfer information. It uses the forearm as a pointing device that can achieve high bandwidth, and discrete inputs from muscle activation or foot switches to fit the needs of different users. The prosthetic controller was tested with healthy persons and with two end users at the University of Tsukuba Hospital. Testing with the end users showed equal performance to the healthy persons at the initial test, and improvement in performance up to 25% over four sessions for one user. The results were published in an international journal paper (IEEE ACCESS).
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
The proposed technology -Human Interface- of this research project was realized in the form of a prosthetic controller. It was verified with experiments using persons without a physical disability, and with two end users. The end users suffered forearm amputation due to trauma, therefore they fit the target user group of the proposed technology.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Further investigation is needed with a large sample size of end users to verify these findings.
Investigation of different input modalities in the control of virtual environments is also needed to compare the performance of posture, force, and EMG as control interfaces in continuous and discrete controls.
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