In January my bionic system went for a hip revision into the medical garage. Next day you are out of the hospital bed ready for rehabilitation walkies with crutches or behind a rollator. And after another night, you are out of the hospital. At that point your rehabilitation exercises for improving walking starts. At first it might be painful, awkward and boring, but walking will improve over the weeks. However rehabilitation might become more entertaining with a higtech led floor.
The led floor is already a common facility in
entertainment studios and are used in shows like the Euro songfestival or
Victoria’s Secret presentations. But now a led floor of 3 meters by 3 meters has
been installed in the Design Lab of the University Twente. Yet to this floor
sensors have been added to generate data about the walking habits and to
measure the progress of the rehabilitation process. The floor has become one
big interactive touchscreen. It has been developed by the company ledGo, which so far sells the floors to the
entertainment market.The led floor is not just meant for boring training walkies. With the video floor lights and colours can be interactively generated. So it can be used creatively for serious/social games and experience. The floor can be used by one person, but can also be used in a game for two. In this way patients can start moving, while their data are generated , compared and analysed. The play feature had already been researched in cooperation with the Rehabilitation Center De Hoogstraat in Utrecht, be it on a led path. But with the square floor games and especially multi-person games become more interesting, while movements will become more varied.
The led floor facility for so called gait rehabilitation is now under development and being researched for use in the e-health sector. For the time being it will be used by rehabilitation centers with patients who rehabilitate from accidents and strokes. But the market is wider. Fitness centers and private practices of physiotherapists will be candidates for the vertical interactive touch screen.
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