Adaptive games for training children’s fine motor skills

Abstract

Children suffer more and more from delayed fine motor skills and the use of smart toys could be a solution to reduce this problem by keeping the children physically active. The Futuro Cube is an example of one of these smart toys, which has been successfully used in research to detect delayed fine motor skills in children. The Futuro Cube could serve as a versatile tool when it can be used as both a toy to detect and train these fine motor skills. An extensive analysis is performed to see the training capabilities of the Futuro Cube. Using a Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment system, a game can be played that is both fun and adjusts itself correctly so that the user’s skills. The Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment system adapts itself so that the user pushes their fine motor skills to new limits. Preliminary results show that the Futuro Cube could be a useful tool for training fine motor skills. However, it will still require some fine-tuning on both the soft- and hardware side.