COSMOBOING! THERAPEUTIC EXERCISE SYSTEM

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of the CosmoBoing! Therapeutic Exercise System is to develop a child-friendly, engaging tool for assuring that children with disabilities participate in and benefit from prescribed therapeutic exercise. The system will serve two populations of children. The first group is comprised of children with acquired and developmental disabilities who are at risk for secondary conditions due to the effects of physical inactivity. Children with specific, acute needs for physical therapy make up the second population addressed by the outcomes of the proposed project. We hypothesize that both populations are more likely to engage in and therefore benefit from exercise if the system that promotes it does so in a manner that is appealing and fun, with exercise serving as the means to activity engagement. The specific aims of the project are to integrate two suites of child-oriented therapeutic exercise systems: The CosmoBot package developed at Anthrotronix, Inc. (Atinc) and the Boing!/Ani-Mate tool developed at National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) into an interactive multimedia product that captures the interest of children and embeds their prescribed exercise in the "games" it promotes. The features of the two existing products will be integrated into a composite package, CosmoBoing!, the design refined and functionally tested. This work primarily consists of mechanical revisions to Boing!, design and fabrication of a distributed-switch player interface based on the Atinc Mission Control component of the Cosmobot system, and integration of the Boing! bungee tension sensor with the Mission Control architecture. CosmoBoing! will then be piloted at NRH's children's rehab center with a sample of twenty-four children representing the target population defined above. The technical, therapeutic and commercial feasibility of CosmoBoing! will be evaluated in clinical trials developed and monitored by a Panel of rehab experts representing Medicine, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology, and Therapeutic Recreation.