Workshop on AI and AR/VR for Exergaming (AIVR4Exergame)
Co-Located with IEEE AIxVR 2025 in Lisbon, Portugal
Workshop Date: January 27
Main Conference: January 27 to 29, 2025
SCHEDULE
All times local to Lisbon.
- 2:00pm to 2:15pm: Opening Remarks by Workshop Organizers Dr. Sean Banerjee and Dr. Natasha Banerjee (Terascale All-sensing Research Studio at Wright State University, USA)
- 2:15pm to 3:15pm: Invited talk by Dr. Yuichi Kurita, Director of the Applied Human Augmentation Project Research Center and Director of the KOBELCO Construction Machinery Dream-Driven Co-Creation Research Center at Hiroshima University: "VR exergame using wearable soft actuators for rehabilitation and exercise"
- 3:15pm to 3:30pm: Paper Session: Marta Gabbi, Alessandra Fava, Valeria Villani and Lorenzo Sabattini: "Game-Changing Therapy: MR for Cognitive and Physical Rehabilitation"
- 3:30pm to 4:00pm: Coffee break and demos hosted by Delsys Europe
- 4:00pm to 5:00pm: Invited talk by Dr. Daniel Roth, Head of Human-Centered Computing and Extended Reality Lab at Technical University of Munich: "Exergaming using XR in Healthcare - Perspectives Beyond Exercise"
- 5:00pm to 5:15pm: Paper Session: Mana Fukasawa, Masayuki Mikuriya, Fumitoshi Ogino and Yu Nakayama: "Spatial Augmented Reality Assistance System with Sensor-based Activity Recognition at Cleaning Activities"
- 5:15pm to 5:30pm: Paper Session: Kazuho Onishi, Yuki Uranishi, Masato Kobayashi, Chang Liu, Goshiro Yamamoto and Photchara Ratsamee: "Generating Double Dyno Motion for Humanoid Agents in Simulated Bouldering Environment through Deep Reinforcement Learning"
- 5:30pm to 5:40pm: Closing Remarks by Workshop Organizers Dr. Sean Banerjee and Dr. Natasha Banerjee
- 5:40pm: Welcome Reception Sponsored by Terascale All-sensing Research Studio and De Luca Foundation
INVITED TALKS
Invited Talk: Dr. Yuichi Kurita (Hiroshima University)
Title: VR exergame using wearable soft actuators for rehabilitation and exercise
Research and development of soft exoskeletons, which consist of soft, flexible materials and actuators, is being carried out by various researchers. It is expected that soft exoskeletons will not only improve motor skills, but also improve the quality of rehabilitation and enable new types of exercise training. For example, in rehabilitation, repetitive therapy is used, but repeating the same training often leads to a decrease in motivation. It has been reported that there is a correlation between motivation and motor function, and that when motivation increases, the activity of the brain's reward system increases, causing a connection with the primary motor cortex, so maintaining and improving motivation is extremely important for improving the quality of rehabilitation. We are developing an exercise support app with a gym menu suggestion function and a rehabilitation support system that uses the illusion of movement through the simultaneous presentation of visual and haptic feedback. In this talk we will give an overview of these studies.
Dr. Yuichi Kurita is a professor in the Graduate School of Engineering, director of the Applied Human Augmentation Project Research Center, and director of the KOBELCO Construction Machinery Dream-Driven Co-Creation Research Center at Hiroshima University. He received his B.E. degree from Osaka University and his M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Nara Institute of Science and Technology. In 2010, he was a visiting scholar at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, and in 2023, he founded the health-tech startup company HUMANMODEL Inc. His research career spans more than 20 years in haptics, robotics, virtual reality and human augmentation, and he has published more than 100 journal and 150 international conference papers. He is co-chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee on Biorobotics and associate editor of the International Journal of Robotics Research and Advanced Robotics.
Invited Talk: Dr. Daniel Roth (Technical University of Munich)
Title: Exergaming using XR in Healthcare - Perspectives Beyond Exercise
This talk will introduce previous work and our understanding of Exergames utilizing XR and AI in Medicine and Healthcare. While traditional exergame approaches may include fitness applications and gamified exercising, many more applications arise in medicine and healthcare. Exergaming could have a substantial impact on further themes, such as rehabilitation and the combating of workforce shortage and experts in medicine and care. The use of different methods in the field of XR, such as techniques for embodiment, and AI, such as data analysis and computer vision, are key to addressing those challenges.
Dr. Daniel Roth's research focuses on human-machine interfaces for medicine and health. Machine intelligence describes a holistic view of the way humans and machines communicate. A large part of his work deals with AI as well as virtual, mixed, and augmented reality-based technologies. Examples include assistance systems for surgical procedures, systems for the assessment and diagnosis of diseases and disorders, and (robot-assisted) rehabilitation. In September 2023, Prof. Roth was appointed to the professorship for Machine Intelligence in Orthopedics at TUM and works at the School of Medicine and Health at the Klinikum rechts der Isar.Previously, he was Junior Professor for Human-Centered Computing and Extended Reality at the Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg. He studied Media and Imaging Technology at the TH Cologne and subsequently completed his doctorate in computer science at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.
ABOUT
AI-enabled AR/VR-based exergames have the potential to enable a broader spectrum of users to participate in rehabilitative and fitness activities in immersive social environments that provide continual feedback to improve performance and incentivize continued usage. However, consumer grade AR/VR systems do not yet have the full capabilities needed to realize exergaming at scale. These challenges include, but are not limited to AI feedback algorithms that can run on untethered systems, long-term usage comfort due to system bulkiness, inability to simulate real-world attributes such as weight and resistance, novel exercise routine generation, and multi-user latency.
Through invited talks, demos, papers, and posters, AIVR4Exergame will bring researchers and industry practitioners together to discuss these new emerging research challenges and technologies. Following topics are of interest.
- Design of exergames to facilitate long-term continued usage
- Privacy and security and related topics for AI and AR/VR use in exergaming
- Ethical considerations for use of AI for AR/VR-based exergaming
- Design of AI algorithms that provide closed-loop feedback to enable continued usability
- Design of AI algorithms for assessing and correcting virtual interactions for safe usage
- Design of AI algorithms to generate novel exercise routines
- Simulating the real-world in AR/VR (e.g., weight, friction, resistance)
- AI techniques for movement tracking using smartphone sensors for smartphone-based AR/VR exergaming
- Incorporating haptics and biofeedback to ensure safe interactions in immersive AR/VR environments
- Effectiveness of AI-enabled AR/VR-based exergaming through results from case studies
- Emergent hardware platforms to enable broader uptake of AR/VR-based exergames
- Long term physical and psychological effects of exergaming in AR/VR
- Co-located and remote social environments for AR/VR exergaming
- Designing rehabilitative AR/VR exergames for children, older adults, and individuals with disabilities
- AR/VR-based tele-rehab server platform to connect participants from remote locations
The workshop will be held in-person (with remote options) at the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal, and is co-located with IEEE AIxVR 2025.
ORGANIZERS
Associate Professor
Terascale All-sensing Research Studio (TARS)
Wright State University
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Senior Research Scientist
Delsys/Altec Inc, USA
Director of Research
Delsys/Altec Inc, USA