An interactive vibration board is a vibration plate with pressure sensors, so your weight shifts steer on-screen games. Kiwii Move is an interactive whole-body vibration board — a vibration plate with four pressure sensors that turns 10 minutes a day into games you play with your body. Studies have looked at the vibration and the sensors one at a time.
What is an interactive vibration board made of?
An interactive board has a vibrating deck with pressure sensors underneath, and it connects to an app of games you control with your body. Most people have seen a plain vibration board in a gym or online. That plain plate is a shaking deck that runs on its own.
With sensors and an app added, the board responds when you move. Lean to one side, and the sensors pick up the shift, so the game on screen moves with you.
Kiwii Move has four pressure sensors under the deck that detect weight shifts left, right, front and back. Those shifts steer the games in its free app for iOS and Android, which needs no subscription.
What do pressure sensors in a balance board measure?
A pressure sensor under a standing surface detects how much of your weight presses on each spot, and it notices when that weight moves. Lean left, and the left side reads more pressure. The app turns that change into a move in the game, then uses the same readings for movement feedback.
Labs and clinics study balance with force plates, platforms that sense where your weight presses down as you stand. Even when you stand still, your body sways a little, so that pressure spot moves. Researchers measure how far the spot travels.
A low-cost game-console balance board measured how much a standing person sways about as reliably as a lab force plate (Clark et al., 2010). That lab study tested 30 adults without leg problems.
Later, researchers gathered 25 studies of the same board and read them side by side. That systematic review found the board generally gave valid and repeatable measures of standing balance (Clark et al., 2018).
Readings were less steady in studies with short tests, a different comparison device or small groups of people. Both papers studied one console board, so their accuracy findings apply to that one board.
What does whole-body vibration do to your muscles?
In a small lab study of 8 healthy, recreationally active men, vibration through the feet made the leg muscles tighten on their own (Zaidell et al., 2013). Shaking the tendon at the back of the ankle sets off the same automatic tightening, called a reflex. The men were lying or seated, so the authors could not say how much standing adds to the reflex.
Researchers pooled 25 trials of whole-body vibration in older adults, comparing vibration with fake vibration and with usual rehab exercise. The participants were older adults with no chronic disease or injury to muscles, bones or nerves (Liu et al., 2023). Each trial assigned people at random to real vibration, fake vibration or usual exercise.
In these older adults, the slower vibration setting made a timed stand-up-and-walk test 1.37 seconds faster than fake vibration.
Standing up from a chair five times showed no clear change. The trials also varied in quality and length, and the search covered only Chinese and English studies.
Whole-body vibration research has been done on lab and clinical equipment. Kiwii Move has not been through a clinical trial, so these vibration results describe the machines researchers used.
Why use video games for exercise and balance training?
An exergame is a video game you play by moving your body, so the movement itself is how you score. Games give each movement a goal and show you right away how it went.
A systematic review gathered 4 randomized trials of balance games played at home. The players were adults 60 and over with balance problems. Each trial assigned people at random to play the games or to keep usual care or no training (Medeiros et al., 2024).
The players rated the games as usable, and these older adults improved more on balance tests than the other group. Still, the authors rated the evidence low to very low, meaning they had little confidence in it. None of the trials used a vibration board.
Kiwii Move's app has 12 games. It also has 9 body tests, which are short balance and reaction check-ins. After each session, the app gives you movement feedback scores.
Those scores are movement feedback from the board's sensors. The exergame trials used other games and other hardware, with older adults who had balance problems. So no study has tested Kiwii Move's games or scores.
What is an interactive vibration board used for, and who is it for?
People use an interactive board for short balance games played on a vibrating deck. On Kiwii Move, a session lasts about 10 minutes and ends with movement feedback.
Kiwii Move is designed for adults who want an approachable way to be active each day.
You need no fitness or gaming experience to start, because the games respond when you shift your weight.
To see how the sensors and games work together on a real deck, read more about our interactive vibration board.
Sources
Clark RA et al., Gait & Posture. Validity and reliability of the Nintendo Wii Balance Board for assessment of standing balance. 2010. europepmc.org
Clark RA et al., Gait & Posture. Reliability and validity of the Wii Balance Board for assessment of standing balance: A systematic review. 2018. europepmc.org
Zaidell LN et al., PLoS One. Experimental Evidence of the Tonic Vibration Reflex during Whole-Body Vibration of the Loaded and Unloaded Leg. 2013. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Liu P et al., Frontiers in Physiology. Effects of whole-body vibration training with different frequencies on the balance ability of the older adults: a network meta-analysis. 2023. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Medeiros CSP et al., PLoS One. A systematic review of exergame usability as home-based balance training tool for older adults. 2024. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov