Gym at Home - A Proof-of-Concept

The average life expectancy has increased in the last decades, but it is still necessary to promote a healthy and active aging. Although older people need to have more caution when doing exercise, it is an important aspect to maintain a healthy and active life. Access to facilities by older people to do exercises in groups and having someone guiding them in the execution of the exercises usually poses challenges for them, due to transportation-related limitations. Our goal is to enable older people to do exercises in their homes, allowing them to have exercise plans that meet their needs. Group exercises with their friends is also an important feature to motivate them to exercise more often. In this paper, we propose a proof-of-concept of a smart gym at home system based on defined scenarios and its installation in a near-real scenario. The proof-of-concept provides a guide to a given exercise plan, with video demonstrations of each exercise. The interaction of the system was carefully thought, since older people are typically not comfortable with technologies. The main interaction method in this proof-of-concept is speech, since the users are distant from the system’s devices while doing the exercises.