Can integrating a virtual therapist make extended reality (XR) rehabilitation feel more supportive and responsive? This 10-week project will extend an XR prototype for people undertaking rehabilitation after an acquired brain injury. The student will integrate a new functional home-based rehabilitation exercise and an embodied virtual therapist that can demonstrate the exercises, monitor task progress, provide encouraging and adaptive feedback, and indicate when a human therapist should intervene.
The project combines software development, interaction design, and digital health research. The student will work with an established cross-disciplinary research programme. Activities will include translating codesign outputs from previous workshops into a demonstrable prototype, building and testing the prototype against scripted scenarios, refining the interaction, and creating an instruction manual and documentation.
This project is suited to a student with experience or a strong interest in Unity/C#, immersive technologies, game or interaction design, AI-enabled agents, or rehabilitation technology. The student will gain practical research experience in translating co-design evidence into testable requirements, XR prototyping, responsible AI interaction design, systematic evaluation and research dissemination, providing a strong foundation for Honours or postgraduate research.
Supervisors
Primary Supervisor: Bahareh Shahri
Other Supervisor(s): Simon Hoermann, Tham Piumsomboon
Application and funding
This is a UC Commitments Summer Scholarship research project. Emailed applications will not be considered. Find out more here: University of Canterbury Scholarship Portal - UC Commitments Summer Scholarship
Final date for receiving applications
25 September 2026
