Interactive visual systems to improve the stay of children in hospitals

Experts in digital engineering and design, audiovisual systems and child psychology, among others, have added their knowledge to make the stay of hospitalized children more enjoyable, with the development of a large curved interactive screen with which they can interact with the scenes and special effects it offers.

Technology is contributing enormously not only to improving health, but to make the stay of hospitalized patients emotionally more comfortable and bearable. Many have been the success stories analyzed in Digital AV Magazine in this regard, in which the new audiovisual systems, tactile and interactive offer their technological grain to improve the recovery of patients, especially the little ones.

One of them has been the collaboration between experts in digital design, AV systems, child medicine and psychology to improve the environment for children and family members at Boston Children's Hospital (Us.) with the development of an interactive giant screen located in the entrance hall of the pediatric center.

The project, coordinated by a team of researchers led by Tim Hunter, professor and researcher of the department UConn Digital & Media Design University of Connecticut (better known as UConn), is based on a screen with HD resolution (from 5.5×7,3 metre) and slightly curved that wraps around this space, to which Kinect technology has been incorporated Microsoft so that the little ones can interact with their movements.

One of the challenges of this project that began in 2012 and it has been launched a few months ago, as Samantha Olschan points out, professor in Hunter's department, "It was the very design of the screen and the scale that we had to develop., since it was about encouraging the participation of children and not that the dimensions of it scared them and they could not carry out activities".

To do this, the team has developed nine children's interactive scenes, creative and therapeutic, that are combined with special effects that are activated with the movement of children in front of the screen so that they participate and play with it.

The system integrates thirteen Kinect sensors (in the version 2 Kinect for Windows) and seven optical cameras, providing data on participants' movements and gestures, that are activated by the circulation and presence of people, up to twelve, passing in front of the screen.

As Tim Hunter explains, "The idea was to empower children emotionally and physically to take control of the screen scenes., in a space and time when they are not in their normal routine. Like this, with a simple wave of the hands, they can rearrange the stars in the sky or move the leaves of a garden; or when moving in front of the screen, an avatar appears that follows them and interacts with them".

In the development of this process "the collaboration and experience of the members of the hospital, experts in child psychology and human behavior, as well as the UConn Digital faculty & Media Design has been instrumental in achieving this challenge with children, since this type of projects are not usually assigned to an academic institution like ours. Thanks to this research collaboration, the team has been able to focus not only on the technical solution, but in increasing and humanizing the user experience and that technology, very complex, be invisible to the rest and seem to do magic", underlines Hunter.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/DD7gk2kHP3g[/youtube]

Other articles on Boston Children's Hospital, Microsoft, UConn Digital & Media Design, University of Connecticut