Motivation
Students often suffer from a lack of exercise, stress and back pain, which increases the risk of chronic illness. ExerRise aims to address these problems through a playful, flexible program.
Goals and approach
In the ExerRise project, we are developing exergames that are specially tailored to the needs of students in order to integrate exercise into their daily study routine and promote their physical and mental health. The exergames are controlled using AI-supported body tracking - all that is needed is a webcam and a laptop/tablet. The user's movements are recorded and converted into game commands. ExerRise thus offers a low-threshold, location-independent solution without additional hardware.
The project is being implemented in several phases in cooperation with the University of Hamburg: Needs assessment, development, evaluation of the health effects and examination of the potential for use in other areas such as schools or rehabilitation facilities. The results will be published in order to promote further development and use in science and practice.
Innovations and prospects
ExerRise thus creates an innovative platform for rethinking health promotion in the university setting - interactive, scientifically sound and tailored to the living environment of students.
Motivation
Lack of movement and a lack of ergonomics at VDU workstations can cause back, head, neck and shoulder pain. Analyzing our posture requires specialist know-how. There is also special hardware available today. Analyzing and guiding our posture via smartphone would be easier and more accessible.
Goals and approach
As part of the MOKIBO-22 project, we are therefore working with the Cologne Sport University to develop an app that analyzes sitting behavior at the workplace. The smartphone camera continuously records posture and activity. The system evaluates the data in compliance with the GDPR using algorithms based on artificial intelligence (AI). In the event of poor posture, for example, the app sends a message to the user and asks them to change their ergonomically unfavorable sitting posture. If users hold a posture for too long, the app encourages them to move. Long-term evaluation with visualizations of sitting behavior with individualized recommendations for action is also possible. The solution can analyze both three-dimensional and two-dimensional image data and is therefore suitable for use with most smartphone cameras.
Innovations and prospects
Ergofox is developing a hardware- and location-independent posture analysis via smartphone - not only as a snapshot, but also as a long-term analysis. The digital ergonomics helper provides an important contribution to better (back) health worldwide.
Diverse research for health and fun with our Ergogames
In addition to our major research projects, we are intensively involved in research into the effectiveness and further development of our Ergogames in a wide range of target groups and areas of application. We have already successfully completed and evaluated projects with nursing staff - with consistently positive results.
We are currently working on implementing our Ergogames in care homes for the elderly in order to support both senior citizens and care staff in their health promotion and prevention activities. At the same time, we see great potential for use at home: we have developed a comprehensive prevention course for this and are looking forward to implementing and evaluating it.
But this is just the beginning! With a lot of motivation and confidence, we want to make our Ergogames usable in other areas and for new target groups - always with the aim of promoting health in an entertaining and positive way.
Are you curious about our completed research projects? Then just click on the button and take a look at what we have achieved so far!
