Artificial intelligence-based personalized serious game for enhancing the physical and cognitive abilities of the elderly

Abstract

Recently, therapeutic exercise serious games have been successfully conducted to enhance cognitive decline in dementia and to aid physical rehabilitation. However, these promising results are only possible based on the premise that the elderly players can keep on playing the game with high motivation until they can see the clinical effects. In line with this, this study was conducted to design a digital healthcare application aiming at improving the elderly’s physical and cognitive functions. This study designed the exercise serious game Farming with Artificial Intelligence-(AI-) based personalized systems of difficulty level adjustment and relative scoring to motivate the user to keep playing the game with pleasure while applying a set of gratification and motivation technique. This study also designed a three-month empirical assessment on user satisfaction and performance test. Results of the study showed that all three aspects of immersion, satisfaction, and performance records become higher than other existing games in the market, which proved the suitability and utility of the proposed serious game as a digital healthcare application. Thus, the personalized and playful elements for the exercise games is expected to provide a more motivating and entertaining environment for the elderly users for further practical and wider usage of emerging digital healthcare applications.