App for reducing the chance of freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Parkinson's disease is a long-term disorder which some elderly people often suffer with. In the early stage of disease, elderly would move slowly. The situation will get worse that patients stop their step suddenly. Such behavior is called the Freezing of Gait (FOG) which has negative effects on elderly. It is dangerous that they can not move while crossing the road. The aim of this project is to create an application assisting patients to break the cycles of FOG by applying Augmented Reality technique, especially for elderly. The application provides AR (Augmented Reality) technology to alert the patients with visual cue by displaying the lines on the screen and auditory cue by playing some audio. When triggering the FOG, patients can open the application to turn on the camera and display the horizontal direction on the screen. Users can see the realworld environment on screen by continuous focus. Then, the horizontal line can move forward, backward or any direction based on the movement of users. The horizontal line can be regarded as a visual cue to help patients to step out on the road without any zebra-crossing. There are two triggering methods for patients in differing places.