Squachu: Development of the Serious Game for Helping Oral Muscle Training

Abstract

The oral muscle weakness gives a bad influence to the usual life activities such as swallowing and utterance. However, the conventional training methods in use to ease these problems are monotone and therefore result in the discontinuity of training. This research adds a new function - mouth shape recognition - to SITA (a Simple Interface for Tongue motion Acquisition) and uses it to develop “Squachu” application. Squachu is a sports game using player's mouth not only for seniors but also for everyone regardless of their gender and age. This paper performed the experiment that 4 seniors played Squachu for approximately 1 week. As a result, almost participant's evaluated values of RSST and oral diadochokinesis tends to improve. Also it appeared that participants had positive attitude towards playing Squachu. These results suggest that Squachu can be one of the training for helping oral muscle. This paper describes the system configuration and presents the evaluation results of Squachu training effects on seniors.