• Question: Do you think that sports based video games (or perhaps other types) can help players with their actual sport?

    Asked by AJ5025 to Andrew, Dan, Emilia, Helen, Katy, LauraAnne, Stephanie on 14 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: LauraAnne Furlong

      LauraAnne Furlong answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      There are systems used in rehabilitation to do this called a CAREN (Computer Assisted REhabilitation ENvironment), we have one in Loughborough and there are also several in the US. You stand in the middle of a large room, and a projector used to project different situations onto your surrounding walls. We can use motion analysis, force analysis and electromyography to measure how your body and your muscles are working in response to what is projected onto the screen, and you can also use your movements to control what happens on screen e.g. you can get the person or object on screen to move in response to you moving left or right in the room. This system can be used in real-time in rehabilitation to teach people how to move or balance properly again, and can also be used to improve performance on a task (e.g. aim for a target) as we can record how they moved to do something – if they miss for example, we can tell them what went wrong and how to fix it. Hopefully you can see this video from University of South Florida which shows the CAREN in action:

      It isn’t just used for leg research, this link also shows another example where a person waves their hand, and the object on screen also moves:

    • Photo: Stephanie Millward

      Stephanie Millward answered on 15 Nov 2016:

      Yeah I think video games are a wonderful way of helping players with their actual sport. I personally visualize my race many times before I swim so that I hav practiced every part of the race may times. In the same way a video game lets you think about the sport/game and makes you think about the strategies and wys of winning. I thinkn its a great thing as it is exciting and makes sport more appealing to people.

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