Stepping into Recovery with an Immersive Virtual Reality Serious Game for Upper Limb Rehabilitation: A Supermarket Experience for Stroke Survivors

One of the leading causes of disability and death worldwide is stroke, affecting the arteries leading to and within the brain. To help survivors relearn lost skills, post-stroke rehabilitation becomes a paramount part of their life, focusing on attaining the best possible quality of life. Regardless, one main challenge is maintaining survivors’ motivation, which when lost, can lead to social isolation, and possibly depression or anxiety. This work proposes the use of a Virtual Reality (VR) serious game to assist during upper-limb physical rehabilitation. The design and development were based on a Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodology with the healthcare professionals and stroke survivors from a rehabilitation center. The game narrative was carefully designed according to pre-determined gestures that survivors should perform for helping them increase upper-limb movement, based on two modes: 1- static - survivors use any arm to pick products from a supermarket shelf; 2- exploratory - survivors move throughout the supermarket to grab all products. During this, it is also possible to enable the mirror feature, allowing survivors to do these activities while the healthy limb is reflected. The game can also be cast to other devices for understanding and support, i.e., assessment sessions with a therapist team. We report the first impressions from healthcare professionals and stroke survivors, suggesting the VR serious game has the potential to increase survivors’ motivation.