Xbox for Stroke Rehabilitation 147
An anonymous reader writes "Using an Xbox modified to run Linux, researchers have developed virtual reality hand exercises for rehabilitating stroke patients. An inexpensive glove controller is used to interact with the Xbox. The hardware cost is a tenth of a comparable commercial hand rehabilitation system, leading to the possibility of deployment in patients' homes."
Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
In case you are wondering what exactly the big deal is about stroke rehab, here is a snippit of a government factsheet [nih.gov]:
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Great job... (Score:5, Insightful)
*shakes head and walks away in shame*
Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
1. A small team of software developers will sit down with you and write some rehab software for the XBox 360.
2. Microsoft will donate the software and equivalent number of 360's to hospitals and clinics.
3. We have a big press conference and you tell how Microsoft is helping stroke victims.
-OR-
We take you to court and do the same thing without you.
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If Microsoft takes the developers to court, they could win legally but could end up with a public relations nightmare, so they will most likely ignore it since they do have very deep pockets.
The only thing I can see come of this is Microsoft phases out the Xbox more quickly and this of course is going to get devel
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A powerglove! Its so retro! (Score:2, Funny)
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But I was so determined to use the awesome Power Glove that I would tape pencils to my fingers and run it in the mode where you had to use the directional pad on the top, and your thumb and index finder were the A and B buttons.
Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
Why an Xbox? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why an Xbox? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe....
1. It is readily available and quite cheap
2. They are all the same specs, so what you develop for 1 xbox would have "almost" the same performance as with all xbox
3. It could be readily plugged into the television set and be unplugged as easily.
4. More glove sales
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(Yes I do realise that MS didn't create it, but then they never invented Conjugated Verbs either....)
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Unlike an old PC which can only be obtained by scrounging, Xboxes were readily available off the shelf. This system was designed to be as cheap as possible.
Unfortunately, like its predecessor in the "economy VR glove" market (the Mattel Power Glove), the VR glove used is no longer available to my knowledge.
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Wouldn't... (Score:2)
Re:Wouldn't... (Score:5, Informative)
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You don't need to replace the hard drive... it's got 10Gb stock, and i assume that is more than enough to run the rehab software.
Ohw, and softmodding an xbox to make it run linux doesn't require a dashboard replacement at all!
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Inaccurate, pehaps. Mistakes, possibly. Fear Uncertainty Doubt it was not.
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It is possible to install Linux on an xbox without a mod chip or even opening the box. It involves loading a "baited" savegame that triggers Intel's infamous buffer overrun and does some reworking of the device's startup files.
However, as best I can recall, the DMCA doesn't care whether you're using a physical chip. It's just the act of circumventing a protection scheme that's illegal. So yes, the DMCA has still been violated.
They could have avoided breaking the law by working on this humanitarian proj
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How do you get this save game onto your Xbox without opening it up to access the hard drive? Buy a memory card that someone has already preloaded with the save file?
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Intel's x86 line of processors, one of which is the CPU of the Xbox, uses an architecture where the call stack traverses down memory. Since a character array traverses up memory, it's possible for a text copying function to copy text to a space on the call stack that won't fit, and the excess characters will overwrite the call stack.
There are three Xbox games that are commonly known to have this flaw, and probably many more that could be found if one was inclined to look.
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Here I am... (Score:2, Funny)
A new twist for the joystick... (Score:2, Funny)
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Prophylactics (Score:2)
Inhibiting research (Score:5, Interesting)
The irony of "free markets" is that the less regulation the worse they perform. Monopolies are crackable DRM.
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Such as;
- extremely high food quality regulation = monopoly for the only company that have the technology/systems to satisfy them and prove it
- awarding a contract for building a road having as a requirement that the company has a comprehensive social awareness policy and dedicated immigrant integration trained HR officers = monopoly/oligopoly for the few/single larger companies with the resources t
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Interesting. As one who has worked in the heavily regulated medical device industry, one of my favorite sayings that I utter frequently (especially when a really good idea gets squashed for "regulatory reasons") is "The more you regulate a business, the worse its products become."
I have a huge number of examples that demonstrate the truth of this statement (don't get me started). Now, that said, I agree that a completely un
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And you would be woefully mistaken. Actually, the regulations that are most onerous are on the company's product development process. And don't get me wrong, those regulations aren't in themselves necessarily hostile to new product development. What ends up happening is that the "quality system", which is created by (mostly) company beaurocrats using the FDA regs as justification, dramatically slows down and even dis
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How to *really* gain acceptance (Score:2, Funny)
"In one exercise, a patient attempts to wipe clean four vertical bars of "dirty" pixels that obscure a pleasant image on a computer display."
You've gotta wonder what'd happen if you loaded pr0n images in there. I'd be doing my exercises all... night... long...
Quite interesting (Score:2)
Let's also not forget that XBOX is a loss leader though, it shows an inherent weakness in this model: you never know of your clients will go the whole path so you can return your money (will they buy games, will they
Uh-Oh! (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, wait... Except that there are big technological advances to be made out there, but researchers all across the USA are scared to death that they are gonna violate a IP law (such as the DCMA) and be whisked to jail, be sued, or worse.
I love the fact that these guys didnt let a little thing like a federal law stop them from inventing a solution that can help millions of people worldwide. They deserve a
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That is ridiculous. Microsoft sells the Xbox at a loss hoping and expecting that people will buy the games and peripherals at ridiculous markups. That's their business model and they are welcome to try it, but in no way are they entitled to one dime of 'profit' if their business model is flawed. The only thing immoral about the situation is that our politicians allow our law
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Additionally, the patient wouldn't be looking at their screen for long periods of time. Therapy sessions are generally limited
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Virtual reality hand excercises? (Score:1)
Wait, what?
Who can honestly say that they did not immediately think of VR pr0n and ... well ... ahem ... you know...
Nothing New (Score:1, Funny)
"hand exercises" (Score:1)
Um, yeah. I guess you have to get the Xbox to run Linux first before you can use it to show your porn, um, I mean "virtual reality environment" in order to do your, um, "hand exercises"...
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I mean, RTFA, it just shows dirty pixels. But you wipe them to see pleasant pictures. And fist butterflyes.
Um, that didn't sound right. Anyway, there's no innuendo here. This is a pure and innocent article about helping people with their strokes!
Game therapy (Score:4, Informative)
For the latter the doctor told my parents to get me to play video games. They, at first, purchased me an (expensive at the time - nearly 3000 dollars) 8086. Unfortunatly for me (and thier money - it wasn't until my senior year in high school - '93 - that I became interested in computers) I never really got interested in it and picked up an Atari which I wore out. I've played video games constantly since then - it worked in my case. I'm sure they wished they had just bought the atari to begin with, but where happy I had something that I wanted to use that was also therapy for my problems.
I sometimes wonder if the same treatment would be prescribed today given the current attitude towards games.
The saddest part is that they had to hack the system to do this. I don't really know why they didn't use a PC and one of the free dev kits around - some are quite good (and many of the pay ones are free for research). Maybe they couldn't really find a replacement for the glove, but then it would seem easier to hack it into a joystick port than what they did. Ahh well, at least the research was done.
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As is turned out, and even the teacher later conceded, his 'distratability' problem only arose when he was given writing assignments. His behavior otherwise was in her own words "exem
PC is better and reusable (Score:2, Redundant)
But wait (Score:3, Interesting)
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you know, if everyone just used things only the way they were "meant" to be used, then I suppose that a lot of things we use today would never be around... just take the PC for example, more than just your average typewriter, it now can do so much more than just what it was meant to do by the big whigs who packaged it and patented it, and Linux can be thanked in large part to that.
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Thus, you're not supposed to solve anything. You are supposed to wait until some solution comes up and then buy it!
Look around you and realize that,
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Yes, you are missing something (Score:3, Informative)
There are a few exceptions as pertain to Fair Us
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The real shame here is that MS doesn't EVER license their devkits to anyone unless they are a serious game developer and can front a huge amount of cash. For that matter, Sony and Nintendo don't, either.
I'm sure they ar
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The real shame here is that MS doesn't EVER license their devkits to anyone unless they are a serious game developer and can front a huge amount of cash.
Did you get the memo about XNA? Mmmmm. Yeah. You see, it's just that Microsoft is giving away the XNA studio which allows you to develop for Xbox360, for free. I'll go ahead and get you another copy of that memo. Mmmmkay?
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Oh, but it's not free: it is $99/hr (free for Windows)
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http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/ [microsoft.com]
Visual C# Express is free
XNA's Game Studio Express is free
Q: How much will XNA Game Studio Express/XNA Framework cost?
A: The XNA Game Studio Express tools and runtime environment for Windows is completely free. To develop, debug and/or play games on the Xbox 360 you will be required to purchase a XNA "Creator's Club" subscription on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Marketplace. The subscription is available in 2 options, $99 a year or $49 f
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I'm assuming that selling the content I create is not an option on the free XNA IDE, tho. No
wait (Score:2)
Simple (Score:1)
The controller is no longer made... (Score:1)
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http://www.vrealities.com/P5.html [vrealities.com]
--Heston (Score:1)
Wait I am not dead yet?
Damn.
breaking the law breaking the law (Score:1)
Someone call the cops! That's illegal!
Good thinking... (Score:1)
XBOX Recovery (Score:1)
Pleasing Image? (Score:2)
Or are they removing clean pixels from a dirty image? Finger motions, eh? [wink wink]
Perhaps it is just a
So perverse. (Score:3, Funny)
I'd read more about it but I don't really read articles. . . .
Lucky stroke victims... (Score:2)
The Xbox setup is cute but... (Score:2)
robotic stroke rehab (Score:2)
I am not familiar with the Rutgers glove in the referenced article, but I think it only senses patient motion, it doesn't move the patient's hand around. Our robots guide patients to move their limbs (shoulder/elbow, wrist, hand, ankle...) while they play various simple video games, letting them move if they ca
GNOME (Score:1)
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Microsoft always risks the hardware "subsidy" (Score:2)
That being said, there's still the little matter of having to hack the hardware to install Linux on it. Running a version of Linux on the Xbox that m
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yup (Score:2)