Patent Application
20160267804
NOT APPLICABLE
In today's world sharp cognitive skills have become highly desirable in many walks of life including but not limited to a variety of sports, firefighting, police functions, armed forces, flying aircrafts, tactical warfare, etc. Research has shown over the years that various methods can be employed to train personnel to improve their cognitive skills Some of the well-known methods include on field training, concentration and perception building, physical and mental exercises, etc. Trainers and coaches also rely on specific opponent analysis and train their teams and personnel by creating similar environment on field. However, these activities are effective only to a small extent and their objective is general overall cognitive skill enhancement without specificity.
The need of highly specific cognitive skill development has lead to the insurgence of supplementary cognitive skill building activities due to their capability to nurture and improve cognitive skills for very specific scenarios. Among these, one of the most popular techniques is the interactive video occlusion training that is used to enhance cognitive capabilities by seeking rapid responses to custom paced simulated or animated videos. A plethora of video games are known in the prior art that create simulated game environment for specific games like baseball, cricket etc. These video games create an interruption during a simulated game and then seek a response from the player playing the game. The player's response is analyzed and compared to the ideal outcome. These simulated and/or animated video games suffer from a few disadvantages that affect their effectiveness in achieving the desired objective of skill enhancement. Two prominent disadvantages are firstly, a simulated or animated video cannot replicate a real life scenario to perfection as it cannot take into account all the environmental and other factors that affect a real life outcome and secondly, most of these video games have limited interactive capability mostly in the form of response input through game controllers, keyboards or other input devices which are highly ineffective in seeking accurate and rapid responses and even the variety of responses that can be sought are very limited. Another limitation that severely affects these video games is lack of detailed and in depth analysis to track the performance of the players.
The present invention relates to a computer implemented training and cognitive skill improving method for training users for specific activities and scenarios and a corresponding system thereof. The method comprises deploying a real life video in a video game environment wherein such real life video may have been previously recorded, presenting the video game environment comprising of said real life video to a user, creating an interruption in the real life video deployed in the video game environment, soliciting the user's response to predict an outcome for a specific scenario and comparing the user's response with the actual outcome in the real life video. In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, the method further comprises of storing and analyzing the user's response to measure improvement in cognitive and other skills of the user. The difficulty level of the game may be increased or decreased based on the user's performance. In one embodiment of the current invention, the method may further comprise inducing distraction factors to increase the difficulty level. The method further comprises displaying performance analysis by highlighting active brain areas on a brain map image corresponding to user's response to specific tasks. In one embodiment of the present invention, the real life videos may be automatically deployed in the video game environment based on parameters defined by the user. Once the real life video is deployed in the game environment and is presented to the user, the interruption in the real life video is caused using temporal occlusion or by pausing the real life video at a specific point or presenting a blank screen to the user at a specific point. In one embodiment of the invention, the response may be sought from the user using touch interface of a computing or mobile device or by using augmented reality display by capturing user's gestures.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, described herein is training and cognitive skill improving system comprising a storage means for storing real life videos, a processor for deploying the real life videos from the storage means into a video game environment, a video display screen for presenting the video game environment consisting of the real life video to a user and an input means for soliciting response from the user based on interruption of the real life video. In one embodiment of the invention, the storage means is a cloud server storage. In another embodiment of the present invention the input means for soliciting response is a touch interface of a computing or mobile device. In yet another embodiment of the present invention, the input means for soliciting response is an augmented reality system capturing said user's gestures.
The embodiments herein and the various features and advantageous details thereof are explained with reference to the non-limiting embodiments that are illustrated in the accompanying drawings and/or detailed in the following description. Descriptions of well-known components and processing techniques are omitted so as to not unnecessarily obscure the embodiments herein. The examples used herein are intended merely to facilitate an understanding of ways in which the embodiments herein may be practiced and to further enable those of skill in the art to practice the embodiments herein. Accordingly, the scope of this patent application and the claims contained herein should not be construed as limited to the illustrative embodiments.
The training and cognitive skill improving method disclosed herein provides for a video game environment hosted on a computing or mobile device that has the capability of integrating real life videos for training a user. The video game environment may be understood as any environment hosted on a device capable of engaging a user to solicit user's response. The video game may be played on any computing or mobile device with a video display screen, a processor and storage either in the form of cloud storage or device's own storage drive where the real life videos to be utilized in the video game environment are stored. The video game environment lets the user choose a real life video or picks the real life video automatically based on requirements or parameters entered by the user. For example, the user may choose to practice returns for tennis serves from a specific opponent and may deploy previously recorded videos of the opponent. The real life videos may be deployed and newer videos may be added by storing the videos and corresponding Solutions on a database. This database may either be locally stored on the device or on the cloud server. Here the term ‘Solutions’ refers to a video with the results graphed on it with analytics. The Solutions file lets the user interact with the video and provides an analysis of the user's response. Once the previously recorded real life video and the corresponding Solution are stored in the database, a deployment tool enables the user to choose the video and interact with it. If the user wants to upload new videos, the user can add details of each video and the corresponding Solutions file to the database and the video will be ready for deployment in the video game environment.
The training and cognitive skill building method disclosed herein is based on the principle of creating interruptions in an ongoing recorded real life video and soliciting a response from the user to predict a specific outcome. Different types of interruptions may be used to ensure all round cognitive skill building and better response under various environmental conditions including but not limited to crowd noise, wind, distractions etc.
The game interruptions may involve the video being temporally occluded or paused at a certain time frame or a black/blank screen presented at a certain time frame and the user is expected to predict the outcome.
Numerous variations may be brought into the video game environment to seek varying responses from the user. These variations are entirely dependent on the type of activity for which cognitive training is being provided and the specific type of skill that needs to be developed. For example, different variations in the volleyball illustration could include predicting the hitter, predicting whether the hitter will hit short or deep, the ball will be hit directly at the passer or away and so on. All such variations in different activities are intended to be covered under the scope of this invention.
In the aforementioned illustrative embodiments, the video game environment relies on the principle of interrupting the real life video using various techniques to solicit a response (usually rapid) from the user. One technique used is known as video occlusion, which essentially means blocking the vision of the outcome of a specific activity in a video. The difficulty level of the game may be increased or decreased intelligently by the system by analyzing the performance of the user and correspondingly increasing or decreasing the video occlusion. For example, in the volleyball scenario, the performance may be adjudged based on various factors including closeness of drawn path of anticipated moving target and actual target movement in the previously recorded video or a comparison of the final position of the anticipated moving target that the user touched or drew, to the actual final position of the moving target in the previously recorded video etc.
The video game environment disclosed herein is advantageous over the known cognitive skill enhancement games in terms of the amount of user interaction that is permitted in the disclosed video game environment. The video game environment seamlessly integrates touch interface in addition to the other traditional means of response input such as keyboard, mouse, game controller etc. The video game environment permits the user to use the touch screen interface of the device to submit a response directly over the recorded real life video deployed. For example, in the volleyball illustration, the user may submit responses such as drawing the path of the ball, drawing the movement of players, touching the end point of the ball, drawing or swiping fingers for a specific action, or touch buttons to respond to specific questions. This touch interface integration makes the disclosed system very convenient and highly interactive when used on tablets, mobiles and other similar devices.
In addition to touch interface, the video game environment may be adapted to seamlessly integrate with augmented reality systems to enable the user to interact in the game using hand and other gestures. For example, in the volleyball example hands gestures may be used to submit response to the temporally occluded video. These responses may include reacting to the path of the ball, reacting to the movement of the players, identifying end point of the ball and the players, responding to stimuli questions etc. The previously recorded real life video is played back in the augmented reality headset and paused at a certain point. The user is then required to move his or her hand in a specific manner to interact with the display. The game play is similar to touch interface but uses an augmented reality system instead.
In the present invention the video game environment is capable of recording and storing the performance related data of each user. In one embodiment, the data is stored on a cloud server that may be retrieved later to track the overall improvement in the skills of the user. The statistics recorded includes game history such as scenarios completed, time spent on training, successful level completion, frequency of scoring higher than threshold score, highest and lowest scores and other performance indicators. The data on performance is displayed per cognitive and/or sports tasks such as reaction time, anticipation, goals saved, blocks, passes received, innocent people not shot etc.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the data is presented and visualized with a brain image, where the specific areas of the brain are highlighted according to the skill or task.
The foregoing description of the specific embodiments will so fully reveal the general nature of the embodiments herein that others can, by applying current knowledge, readily modify and/or adapt for various applications such specific embodiments without departing from the generic concept, and, therefore, such adaptations and modifications should and are intended to be comprehended within the meaning and range of equivalents of the disclosed embodiments. It is to be understood that the phraseology or terminology employed herein is for the purpose of description and not of limitation. Therefore, while the embodiments herein have been described in terms of preferred embodiments, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments herein can be practiced with modification within the spirit and scope of the embodiments as described herein.
