The study of user motivation when interact with a glove controller for rehabilitation application in virtual reality environment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand and seek out the characteristics of commercial data gloves that are feasible to use in VR-based hand rehabilitation applications, as well as to investigate how VR-based glove rehabilitation applications and conventional hand rehabilitation practice affect the intrinsic motivation of young people. In this study, we collected a list of currently available commercial data gloves from multiple sources such as Internet search engines and literature retrieval engines as well as e-market platforms. As a result, we found 20 eligible data glove devices of different brands and analyzed 39 different models of data gloves. There are 34 to 35 data glove devices available for hand dexterity testing. Some key criteria can be extracted to decide whether a glove is suitable for a particular dexterity test. In FMA-UE, the glove provides abduction and adduction motion tracking at the thumb position. In the ARAT and WMFT indicators, the data glove should be able to provide extension and flexion at the thumb (including the TM joint) to provide a finer display of finger movement. This research used the quantitative method to analyze the changes in the intrinsic motivation of young participants after using the two platforms of the VR-based rehabilitation test and the conventional test. During the experiment, we measured people's levels of intrinsic motivation using a tool called the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI). Also, we recruited 62 young adults between the ages of 18 and 40 to participate in the study. The results showed that through the paired sample t-test, the adolescent participants had an impact on the four different levels of intrinsic motivation of the VR-based glove rehabilitation system and the conventional ARAT rehabilitation practice. Among them, the scores of using the VR-based glove system on the Interest, perceived competence, Effort, and Value subscales were all significantly higher than those using traditional ARAT rehabilitation practices.