Near-realistic mobile exergames with wireless wearable sensors

Exergaming is expanding as an option for sedentary behavior in childhood/adult obesity and for extra exercise for gamers. This paper presents the development process for a mobile active sports exergame with near-realistic motions through the usage of body-wearable sensors. The process begins by collecting a dataset specifically targeted to mapping real-world activities directly to the games, then, developing the recognition system in a fashion to produce an enjoyable game. The classification algorithm in this paper has precision and recall of 77% and 77% respectively, compared with 40% and 19% precision and recall on current activity monitoring algorithms intended for general daily living activities. Aside from classification, the user experience must be strong enough to be a successful system for adoption. Indeed, fast and intense activities as well as competitive, multiplayer environments make for a successful, enjoyable exergame. This enjoyment is evaluated through a 30 person user study. Multiple aspects of the exergaming user experience trials have been merged into a comprehensive survey, called ExerSurvey. All but one user thought the motions in the game were realistic and difficult to cheat. Ultimately, a game with near-realistic motions was shown to be an enjoyable, active video exergame for any environment.