Policy-Based Awareness: Implications in Rehabilitation Video Games

Interactive video games are being used increasingly to transform the dull and repetitive nature of rehabilitation exercises into an enjoyable play by moving limbs or whole body. One major benefit of using video games in rehabilitation is the possibility of home-based treatments. Video games open up new options for occupation therapists to remotely supervise the compliance of patients with their rehabilitation therapy while monitoring changes in patients´ functions over a period. For this to happen efficiently, in this paper we propose that some routine activities of occupational therapists be partially incorporated into software agents. These agents should recognize the relevance of patient´s problems to their exercise tasks based on their awareness about patients´ conditions. We present a 3-step process, called Required Awareness of Agents based on Policies (RAAP), to create awareness about policies in agents where policies are obtained from the domain of rehabilitation treatment, and demonstrate that the actions of such agents are always policy compliant.