Serious Game Design and Development for Different Hand-Prosthesis Training

The current project will be performed under the umbrella of the research program of the Learning Action-Perception lab at the Dept of Human Movement Science of the UMCG (Groningen). The lab is led by Raoul Bongers and he will be the primary content supervisor of the project usually in collaboration with a MA student or a PhD student. 
The project will be supervised also by our Technical Support group. Jack Sell, a former student from the Hanze will supervise the programming of the games.

The research of the lab focuses on how people learn new coordination patterns in the arms, specifically in the muscle activations. This knowledge is applied to develop trainings for hand or arm prosthesis use. Currently, there is some knowledge in the literature regarding requirements of training games for the control of muscle signals to use a hand or arm prosthesis. The idea of the current project is to develop a setup (most of this is available) to control a Unity game with muscle signals. Based on the available time that is left 1-4 different games will be developed and implemented to train the muscle signals.

The research question of this project is what are the different game-designs to train hand and arm prosthesis use. In these games, disabled and non-disabled users can learn to control muscles to control an avatar on the screen. The game is controlled in an identical manner as a hand and arm prostheses are controlled. The project is part of a larger project where we develop a training tool that can be used in rehabilitation practice to train upper limb prosthesis use. 
The current target group is healthy adults. Depending on the experiment also people with an amputation must be able to play the game.

The project starts with a short literature review in which different prosthesis training games will be evaluated. In the same time the basics of the setup (i.e., developing hardware connections) in which the games will be played will be developed. Based on the time available 1-4 games will be implemented. The implemented games will be based on what is currently known in the literature about best ways to train prosthesis use. The games should also include different forms of feedback (knowledge of results, knowledge of performance and vay in the focus of attention (internal vs external)).
This seems to be a great project for a student who wants to improve their programming skills in interaction with the client while working in an academic research environment. Hence the skills learned will be broader than just programming but also, and in particular, how your programs can help the researchers performing the experiment they want to perform.

The desired end product should be: 

1. a well-functioning project foundation in which games can be implemented, and 
2. 1-4 implemented games within the project. 

Next to these products we want a well-documented source file and a background document explaining the functioning of the game and the steps of the program.