An exergame framework for obesity monitoring and management

Exergames are one of the ways to motivate and engage obese people to undertake a level of exercises through fun-based games. One of the challenges is that the said games should be ubiquitously accessed, and player should have the feeling or feedback when playing in the virtual world that will enhance the physical aspects of the game experience, improve the physical skills of the players, and imitate the use of physical artifacts. To this end, this paper describes a haptic-based pervasive exergames framework to support obesity treatment. The framework acts as an enabler to develop different pervasive exergame applications suitable for the obese people. One of the issues of such kind of proposed framework is to explore how haptic audio/visual or tactile feedback can motivate the players or obese patient to have immersive experience i.e. enjoyment with stronger interest to play or use the system. The design and implementation of the proposed platform for obesity is described and illustrated through the description of a sample tactile/audio/visual exergame.