Inspiration

Alzheimer disease is the leading cause of dementia in older adults. To date, there are no effective disease-modifying treatments, but recent studies have shown exercise and cognitive stimulation to be associated with a reduced risk of dementia. Virtual reality is a promising technology for combining exercise and cognitive stimulation and may enhance brain health in older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Games

Sal’s Sanctuary and Wildlife Enclosure are two fun, engaging, and cognitively challenging virtual reality exergames designed specifically for older adults. A third game, Underwater Adventures is currently in development.

Sal’s Sanctuary - Rescue animals that have escaped the sanctuary while navigating an urban environment

Wildlife Enclosure - Look after and take care of rescued animals located in exotic environments

Underwater Adventures (In Development) - Explore and photograph aquatic life in this underwater world

Bike

NeuroRiderVR - A novel, custom-built exercise bike designed specifically for older adults and locomotion in VR.

Responsibilities

  1. Developed a cognitively challenging exergame in virtual reality for older adults (Lead Engineer)
  2. Developed a custom-built exercise bike (Lead Engineer)
  3. Developed the environments, physics, and interaction system for the game
  4. Collaborated with a small, high-energy team of undergraduate students, master students, and professors
  5. Optimized performance by utilizing assets and other techniques to reduce rendering overhead in virtual reality
  6. Integrated a heart rate monitor into to the game for monitoring a users heart rate and heart rate variability
  7. Integrated a custom-built exercise bike as an input controller for biking in the game
  8. Designed and developed a SQL database to store game data
  9. Designed and developed a login and registration system to manage a user’s session
  10. Installed and maintained a version control server

Soft Skills

  1. Leading small teams on large-scale, long-term projects
  2. Collaborating and communicating effectively on cross-functional, multi-disciplinary teams
  3. Adapting to a rapidly changing work environment
  4. Developing creative solutions to challenging problems

Technical Skills

  1. Developing serious games for virtual reality
  2. Creating 3D CAD parts and assemblies In SolidWorks
  3. Designing for manufacturing and working with the machine shop
  4. Designing and soldering circuits
  5. Designing levels, game physics and interaction systems in Unity 3D
  6. Working with assets, scripts, prefabs, textures, animation, GUI, events, and scriptable objects in Unity3D
  7. Familiarity with design patterns and interfaces
  8. Writing clean, readable, and easily maintainable code
  9. Creating and maintaining a version control server

Software

  1. Perforce
  2. SolidWorks
  3. Unity3D
  4. Visual Studio
  5. XAMPP

Programming Languages

  1. C#
  2. PHP
  3. SQL
  4. C/C++ (Arduino)

Packages

  1. UnityEngine.Networking – HTTP communication with web server
  2. UnityEngine.UI
  3. System.Linq
  4. System.Net.Sockets – Udp communication
  5. System.Threading
  6. System.IO.Ports – serial port communication
  7. UnityEngine
  8. UnityEngine.AI - pathfinding
  9. stdlib.h - standard Arduino library
  10. ResponsiveAnalogRead.h - analog input noise reduction