以Kinect為基礎之遠距虛擬替身互動技術開發高齡者關懷平台

Kinect-based Long-distance Avatar Interaction to Support Distanced Elderly Care

劉品如(P. J. Liu) ； 裴駿(C. Pei) ； 孫天龍(T. L. Sun)

《福祉科技與服務管理學刊》 1卷2期 (2013/05) Pp. 57-71

https://doi.org/10.6283/JOCSG.2013.1.2.57

摘要

本研究擴充微軟發展的Avatar Kinect^TM遠距互動技術，以Kinect結合Unity 3D電玩引擎開發一遠距虛擬替身互動高齡關懷平台，讓年輕學生志工更容易帶領照護中心的長者做運動來促進健康。本文首先介紹遠距虛擬替身互動平台之開發，包含Kinect原理與應用，Kinect與3D電玩引擎Unity 3D整合，即時操控3D場景裡的虛擬替身（Avatar），以及讓Kinect透過網路連線操控遠端Unity場景中的虛擬替身。為了驗證此平台之效能，本研究與南投某日間照護中心合作，將本研究開發之遠距關懷平台安裝在日照中心與附近的科技大學，讓學生與日照中心的高齡者進行遠距虛擬替身互動，並進行使用者經驗評估實驗。結果發現單純使用Skype時，高齡者主要都與學生志工談話聊天，學生志工無法帶領高齡者運動；而同時使用Skype與Kinect虛擬替身互動平台時，高齡者會專心看著學生志工的虛擬替身學習他們的動作，確實能讓學生志工更容易帶領高齡者做運動，特別是對男性高齡者效果更為顯著。

關鍵字

遠距虛擬替身互動技術 ； 高齡者遠距關懷

並列摘要

This study augmented Microsoft's Avatar KinectTM technology to develop a long-distance elderly-care platform. The platform allowed a person at a remote location to motivate an elderly person to do exercises through avatar interaction. This paper first introduced the development of a long-distance avatar interaction platform using the depth camera Kinect and a game-authoring tool called Unity3D. We discussed Kinect, the integration of Kinect with Unity3D to manipulate a 3D avatar in the game scene, and the connection and synchronization of two Unity 3D scenes at geographically remote sites. A preliminary user experience evaluation experiment was conducted by introducing the developed platform to an elderly day care center in central Taiwan. Volunteer students from nearby universities used Skype and the Kinect avatar interaction platform to motivate the elderly to exercise. The experiment results showed that when only Skype-based long-distance voice and video communication is used, the elderly tended to talk to the students and did not want to exercise. But when Skype is used together with our Kinect-based avatar interaction platform, the elderly will shift their focus to the student's avatar to follow the avatar's movement. As such, the student volunteer can easily motivate the elderly to exercise. This effect is more pronounced for male elderly.

並列關鍵字

Kinect ； Long-distance avatar interaction ； Elderly care

參考文獻

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