Research

Adaptive Healthcare Technologies

Woody, our educational social robot platform, playing e-Cube with his human friend.

Technology plays an important role in modern health care. When designed properly, it can automate the labor-intensive and costly processes, producing objectively measured data, and enables novel assessment and intervention approaches which were otherwise impossible before. Our research focuses on developing technology-enabled solutions for low-cost, long-term healthcare, with the current focus on game-based cognitive assessment and training and autonomous robots for health monitoring and social interactions.

FUNDING:

1. NSF Award No. 2002721 (PI: Kiju Lee, 09/01/19 - 01/31/22)

2. Case-Coulter Pilot Project Grant (PI: Kiju Lee, 10/01/18 - 8/31/19 - discontinued due to PI's move to TAMU)

3. NSF Award No. 1445012 (PI: Kiju Lee, 09/15/14 - 08/31/19)

4. NSF Award No. 1109270 (PI: Kiju Lee, 08/01/11 - 07/31/14)

Figure. The e-Cube games for cognitive assessment and training.

This project develops and evaluates a tangible block game platform developed for automated, play-based assessment of cognitive skills. The original form of the technology involves a set of highly instrumented blocks with motion sensing and wireless communication capabilities for detecting player’s manipulation motions, speed, and behavior. Aiming to reduce technical complexity and lower the cost, we have recently converted this highly-instrumented technology into a much simpler vision-based one that uses 3D-printed cubic inch blocks and an overhead camera. We are currently conducting a human subject study testing the vision-based tangible games for cognitive assessment. This study will continue throughout the Spring 2021 semester, and we are calling for your participation! Please click here for more information. The previous games using the sensitized blocks were tested on young healthy adults (age: 18-30), young children (age: 4-6), and older adults (age: 65+).

Music Blocks

A variety of interesting games, incorporating music and auditory feedback into the game design have been also developed. The following video highlights these MusicBlock games (Student: David Miranda, MS 2018)