**1. Introduction**

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move and maintain balance and posture [1]. CP is caused by damage to the brain or abnormal development. Since symptoms vary from person to person, there is not a specific treatment for all children with cerebral palsy.

Nowadays, the search for low-cost and more effective treatments has resulted in the incorporation of new information and telecommunication technologies (ICT) in the field of rehabilitation, for instance telerehabilitation [2]. In this context of telerehabilitation, systems that incorporate video games play an important role. Several studies have shown that playing video games can improve attention, memory and overall performance [3,4].

The aim of this project is to develop a tool that includes dual activities for rehabilitation, as well as a data-system for the specialists to track the evolution of the user. These activities are controlled by the Micro:Bit board, which includes sensors that collect environmental information such as acceleration, temperature or light. These games have the same purpose: to train motor activity and cognitive skills simultaneously. To complete the game, the user must pedal a stationary bike, whilst solving matching, mathematical and memory challenges.

### **2. Materials and Methods**

The Micro:Bit is a board [5] developed by the BBC, designed to encourage children to get involved with computing and programming. This type of device can be programmed using simple graphical interfaces. Programs can be created with Microsoft MakeCode, its own programming environment, but environments such as Scratch, Tynker or Code.org are used to develop projects with this type of device.

This project was developed in Kittenblock, based in Scratch. This platform supports the programming of two Micro:bits. We used two Micro:bit boards, one version 1.5 and the

**Citation:** Molinero-Rodríguez, A.; Careniro-Medín, R.; Miranda-Duro, C.; Nieto-Riveiro, L.; Castro, P.M.; Dapena, A. Development of Dual Activities with Micro:Bit for Interventions in People with Cerebral Palsy. *Eng. Proc.* **2021**, *7*, 21. https:// doi.org/10.3390/engproc2021007021


Academic Editors: Joaquim de Moura, Marco A. González, Javier Pereira and Manuel G. Penedo

Published: 12 October 2021

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other v.2. The communications with the Micro:bit v2 are through Bluetooth and with the v1.5 board are through a USB.

We created three games, shown in Figure 1, which have the same purpose: to train aerobic and cognitive skills.


Some variables were defined in order to represent the user's progress. Kittenblock saves these variables and after each session with the user, the therapist can save the progress and store it in a csv file. The structure and an example of the CSV file are shown below: [Username], [date], [time], [score], [speed of game], [level of dificult].

**Figure 1.** Developed games: (**a**) Math, (**b**) shape matching and (**c**) memory games.

#### **3. Future Work**

Some tasks and tests have been left for the future due to time constraints and pandemicderived problems, restricting access to the Aspace facility and its users. In the future, the tool will be tested with real users in order to measure its effectiveness. Moreover, a platform is being developed using Django, a Python Web framework. Through this app the therapist can graphically analyze the results collected by the tool, track each user's progress and facilitate data recollection.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, R.C.-M.; methodology, A.M.-R.; software, A.M.-R.; writing, A.M.-R.; supervision, C.M.-D., L.N.-R., P.M.C. and A.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** Centro de Investigación de Galicia CITIC and Campus Innova (agreement I+D+ 2019-20) is funded by Consellería de Educación, Universidade e Formación Profesional from Xunta de Galicia and European Union (European Regional Development Fund—FEDER Galicia 2014-2020 Program) by grant ED431G 2019/01 and Universidade da Coruña. Partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science (Challenges of Society 2019) PID2019-104323RB-C33.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.


#### *Proceeding Paper*
