Touch Interactive System Design with Intelligent Vase of Psychotherapy for Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of an intelligent vase that combines the cultivation of plants with psychotherapy for the Alzheimer’s adjuvant therapy (from now on, referred to as AD) of patients. RECALL (The name of intelligent vase which defined by this paper), which includes hardware and software applications, as well as a unique hand gesture interaction method, is able to collect patients’ hand gestures and play photos, to remind patients of the plant’s growth status. To evaluate our conceptual system, we created a preliminary prototype. We conducted an experiment with leap motion. This project tries to explore a kind of interaction method by cultivating plants to simulate cognitive training activities, to stimulate memories through family pictures, to slow down the cognitive decline from AD, to incorporate non-drug intervention into the family life of AD patients, to reduce the expenditure, time, and energy costs, and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

Keywords

• interaction design
• hand gesture interaction
• alzheimer’s disease
• psychotherapy