Design of a serious game for learning vibrotactile messages

To prevent accidental falls, we have designed an augmented shoe aiming at assisting a user when walking. For this, the risk level (low, medium, high and very high) represented by the current situation is conveyed to the user through vibrotactile messages. In this paper, we describe the design of a serious game dedicated to learning of these signals. The game is centered on a virtual maze, whose parts are associated with the four risk levels. To explore this maze, fitted with a pair of the augmented shoes, the user is invited to walk in a room, completely empty, whose dimensions are mapped to those of the virtual maze. When moving, for each area explored the corresponding signal is delivered to the user through the augmented shoes. An initial experiment confirmed the idea that vibrotactile messages can serve for communicating the level of risk.