Proposal-2

** 1. What is the application problem you are trying to solve? **
==== //Injuries resulting from sports are very common. A problem that we are trying to solve is to motivate athletes who have lost interest in following their physiotherapy treatment. We are specifically targeting those who suffer from knee injuries. We hope that through our AR world we can motivate patients to follow through physiotherapy treatments in hopes to fully recover. In our AR world, there is an audio-based instructor so the user can be guided through the steps correctly. The knee is made up of two different joints:// //the tibio-femoral joint and the patello-femoral joint. The most common// injury is a meniscus tear (pain along the joint line), which is our primary focus. ====

** 2. What evidence is there that this is a problem? **
==== //A study done by Henry over a seven year period related to injuries to professional basketball players show that there were 576 injuries occurred in 49 of the 71 players. Of that, 66% of the games were missed due to knee problems; there were 80 knee injuries.// ====

** 3. Who are the users; what are their characteristics? **
==== //Our users will be people between the ages 18 – 30, who have injured their knee from playing sports. People are continuously involved in sport activities and are bound to injure themselves. As a result, our application has a wide market range.// ====

** 4. What existing VR or AR concepts, tackling your problem or application, are described in the literature? **
==== //A VR concept was developed to undergo physiotherapy exercises at home without having to wait for the next session with the therapist. In this physiotherapy exercise, Rado developed a virtual physiotherapeutic program for movements like squats. His team created a video of an animated human doing squats, which they showed their patients. The next step was to place four sensors on each leg (one on the thigh, knee and two on each foot), which would show the movements of the patient on the screen. Six infrared cameras recorded their actions while the computer program analyzed their movements.// ==== ==== //An AR concept similar to the above designed VR was designed to teach people to do simple exercises in the comfort of their own house. An augmented reality helped users to first see what the exercise looked like then froze the final position allowing the user to complete the exercise. When the user completed the exercise, the color changes to indicate the completion// ====

** 5. What sort of VR /AR concept is your team trying to create? **
==== //Our team is trying to integrate an AR concept to help those who have injured their knee due to sports. Part of the AR will be an audio format that acts as a therapist, guiding and mentoring the user’s action, and motivating them. The AR allows the user to visualize the actions they’re performing via a screen. The user will have a knee, ankle and hip tracking device which detects the movement and gets analyzed on the screen, showing if the movements are done correctly.// ====

** 6. What is unique about your concept compared to existing implementations – Take some risks here with new ideas. **
==== //Compared to the existing implementations, our concept is unique because our augmented reality aims provide a recovery program for patients with knee injuries. This is done by providing the users with guidance from an online therapist to monitor and assess the users.// //Another unique quality about our concept is that we will incorporate a knee brace that doubles as an augmented reality monitor and as a heating/cool treatment. It has been shown that heating and cooling treatments are one of the most effective treatments when considering musculoskeletal injuries. While users are rebuilding their knee muscle by following certain exercises, they will also benefit from heating/cooling function on the knee brace that will increase blood flow to the knee, decrease muscle spasm, reduce pain and stiffness.// ====

** 8. What is the expected outcome of you teams project and what are the anticipated benefits of the resulting solution of the problem if it were implemented? **
==== //The outcome expected of our project is to allow people between the ages of 18 – 30 who have had knee injuries to be able to recover again. Our project allows the user to exercise at their own convenience and at the comfort of their own home.// ====

**9. Document User's Experience**
Chris had suffered a knee injury while playing basketball with his friends. He was annoyed that the physiotherapy clinic was a two-hour drive and hated being stuck in traffic. With the help of his friend, Mike, he found out about the APE (Augmented Physiotherapy Exercise). The APE can be setup anywhere Chris chooses and have a real physiotherapist evaluate him during each session.  Chris sets up the APE to start his physiotherapy session. He wears his headset and checks if his physiotherapist, Sandy, is online. To acknowledge that the therapist is online with him, he says, “Hello Sandy.” The therapist replies back, “Welcome Chris. Today is Day 2 of your session. Good work!” Sandy, the therapist, monitors his performance and evaluates him at the end of his session giving him feedback on his progress. The only individuals Chris can interact with is his therapist.He straps on a tracking device on his ankles, knees and his hips. These tracking devices act as markers to identify his motions and to determine if his exercises are completed correctly. He turns on the APE by using a remote, a physical hand-held control. He plugs in a ‘progress key’ in the USB port, which pops up all the previous progress and his personal data. The progress key enables this application to become non-linear, since it will always pick up from where the user left off, therefore making it different each time.

A welcome screen pops up: “Welcome back Chris! We’re going to have more fun today!” The therapist is readily available to assist Chris with whatever he needs. With the remote, he clicks on his personal data. The personal data states his name, date of birth, weight, height, and type of knee injury. He clicks on the progress level. It shows that Chris is at the beginner’s level of the program. The beginner’s level has low impact exercises in order to not worsen the injury. The exercises in this level that Chris will be doing is listed on the screen: calf muscle stretch, quad muscle stretch, hamstring stretch, hip abduction, side-lying leg lift, and straight leg raise. There are three stars (reflecting three attempts). If Chris was not able to complete the exercise and is straining himself, he gets one star and Sandy tells him to try it next time. Chris cannot jump to the intermediate level as it is blocked by Sandy. The intermediate level becomes available to him when he finishes the beginner’s level without difficulty. On the upper left hand side, there is a timer placed, marked at thirty minutes, showing Chris his time limit. It starts to count down when Chris starts his exercises.

After his thirty minutes of exercise, a message pops up: “Good job, that’s it for today!” The program is setup so that Chris cannot exceed the time limit. This is to prevent Chris from exhausting himself and further damaging his knee. When his exercises are completed, Sandy evaluates him and his results are transferred to the head-coupled display so Chris can view at it as well.

** 10 Select VR/ AR Content sources **
==== //There are two main contents that we adapted from other media. The first is an interface that uses a treadmill that has a modified speed, which is placed in front of a visual display screen that is surrounding the patient on either side. The screen projects the virtual world. “ The system helps patients by using moving images to trick the patient's brain into thinking they are walking more slowly than they are, which in turn encourages them to walk faster”. The more the patients use and progress through this application, the better their injuries will heal almost without the patient realizing it. This is because they are immersed into the visual display that projects them walking down a street. This application effectively tricks the body and brain. Wendy, the inventor of this application states: "The environment is stimulating and entertaining and there's less fear of falling over. Our test subjects are usually surprised when I tell them they've improved by up to 20 per cent."// ====

==== //The second application that we build upon is called Augmented Reality Exercise Instruction System. AREIS is an application that applies augmented reality technologies to help teach people exercises. The exercise position is displayed on screen and then freezes the “overlay in the final position for the exercise and provides another overlay showing the user his or her current position.”AREXIS uses ARToolkit and a webcam to track user's movements. "The marker positions are projected in to screen space coordinates so they can be reference in a common coordinate system . One marker must be specified as the reference point for the rest of the markers. This reference point will always match up with the corresponding point on the user's body".// ====

//Our application references these ideas but still remains quite different because APE uses a head coupled display where the user is able to look at his knee and have an overlaid image of the correct motions and exercises he/she are supposed to perform. The user is then supposed to mimic the overlaid image, if this is done correctly the user will receive feedback in an audio form, indicating to move to the next step. The user is also connected to an online physiotherapist to aid and monitor the user’s actions.//