Virtual Reality Zoo Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease Using Real-Time Gesture Recognition

Alzheimer's disease affects almost ten million people every year. Negative emotions such as frustration and anxiety can have impact on brain capability in terms of memory functions. Alzheimer's patients experience more negative emotions than healthy older adults. Non-pharmacological treatment such as animal therapy could help Alzheimer patient but has restrictions and requirements. We propose a Virtual Reality Zoo Therapy system in which the patients are immersed in a virtual environment and can interact with animals using their hands. With the immersive experience of virtual reality (VR), patients feel that they are in a real therapy room and can freely interact with animals. This system is controlled by an intelligent agent which tracks the patients' emotions using electroencephalography and commands the animals according to their hand gesture and emotions. Experiments have been done and preliminary results show that it is possible to predict patients' hand gesture and interpret them in order to interact with virtual animals and the Zoo Therapy system can reduce the negative emotions.