KIHECT as a rehabilitation tool to improve the accuracy of hand-eye coordination among Malaysian rugby juniors

Abstract

The Kinect Hand-Eye Coordination Technology (KIHECT) device has been successfully developed as a rehabilitation tool to improve the accuracy of hand-eye coordination (HEC) among Malaysian junior rugby players. Ninety rugby players from Sekolah Sukan Tunku Mahkota Ismail (SSTMI) aged from 16 to 18 years participated in this study. Subjects were randomly divided into three groups, which are the treatment, manual and control group with each group consisting of 30 subjects. Five Malaysian rugby coaches were selected to evaluate the validity of the developed device. The “Simultaneous Ball Throw Out of Both Hands” test was used to assess the hand-eye coordination of the players before and after the intervention was carried out. During the intervention stage each group received a different form of training for two weeks; the treatment group used the KIHECT device, the manual group used the conventional approach to train the accuracy of hand-eye coordination and the control group were involved in routine training with the coach. Three types of statistical analysis were applied to analyze the data obtained, which included the test-retest, paired sample t-test and one-way Anova test. The test-retest gave a reliability value higher than 0.6. In the paired sample t-test, the result was significantly different (p<0.05) for the treatment and manual group to compare the effectiveness of the training methods used by each group. The One-Way Anova test, there was no significant difference between the treatment and manual group. However, there were significant differences for comparison between the treatment and control group as well as the manual and control group. This showed that the KIHECT device is beneficial as a medium to maximize the accuracy of hand-eye coordination, and it is seen to have potential in applications of sports technology.