Games and their application in rehabilitation have formed a new and rapidly growing area of research. A critical hardware component of rehabilitation programs is the input device that measures the patients’ movements. Following Microsoft’s release of Kinect, extensive research has been started on its applications as an input device for rehabilitation. However, since most of the works in this area rely on a qualitative determination of the joints’ movements rather than an accurate quantitative one, detailed analysis of patients’ movements is hindered. The goal of this article is to determine the accuracy of the Kinect’s joint tracking. To accomplish this task, a model of upper body was fabricated. The displacements of the joint centers were estimated by Kinect at different positions and were then compared with the actual ones from measurement. Moreover, the dependency of Kinect’s error on distance and joint type was measured and analyzed.
The study found that kinect measures and reports the accuracy of a sensor that can be directly used for monitoring physical therapy exercises. Using this sensor makes remote rehabilitation more possible.