[Interview] Make rehab play, and seniors will move -- and think -- more: Danish CEO

“Play is a free and voluntary activity,” said Henrik Hautop Lund of Entertainment Robotics, who argues that older adults may do more when rehabilitation stops feeling like treatment. (Courtesy of Henrik Hautop Lund)

At KIMES 2026, Korea’s biggest medical-device trade show, Henrik Hautop Lund was showing something that looked almost trivial: a tablet and a cluster of square floor tiles flashing red and blue. Step on the right color and the light jumps elsewhere. Miss it and the game moves on. In a hall full of machines built to scan, monitor and warn, Moto Tiles looked closer to play.

That is precisely why Lund thinks it may have found an opening in Korea, particularly in senior-care settings.

Lund, a Danish roboticist who once worked with the MIT Media Lab and LEGO on early robot toys, is not really selling tiles. He is selling a bet about behavior: older adults, especially those afraid of falling or worn down by repetitive rehab, may do more if the work stops feeling like treatment.

In a recent interview with Korea Biomedical Review at a hotel near COEX in Seoul during KIMES, Lund described play as “a free and voluntary activity” and argued that once people enjoy the exercise, they keep going. If they keep going, they sometimes do more than a clinic can usually draw out of them.

That claim is broader than a product demo. Moto Tiles is a modular system that lets therapists place a few tiles on the floor for someone still using a walker, then add more as strength or confidence improves.

Lund compares it to LEGO because, in his view, the system should not dictate the therapy. It should give clinicians pieces and let them decide what fits “that particular patient at that particular point in time.”

The games are built around speed, balance, reaction and memory. Some ask users to identify mismatched colors. Others ask them to remember hidden pairs or respond to sound. The point is to combine physical and cognitive activity in the same task.

Lund demonstrated Moto Tiles at KIMES, Korea’s biggest medical-device trade show, held March 19 to 22 at COEX in Seoul. (Courtesy of Henrik Hautop Lund)

Lund tied that idea to studies he said had already been carried out in Europe and Asia. In one randomized trial he described, seniors with an average age of 83 used the system for 13 minutes at a time, twice a week for 12 weeks, adding up to less than five hours of active training.

After that, he said, the group improved by nearly 150 percent on balance tests. He also cited a randomized trial in Shanghai involving about 100 seniors with mild to moderate dementia, saying the intervention group showed statistically significant improvement on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment after about five hours of use.

He paired those numbers with a simpler observation. In nursing homes and senior activity centers, he said, older adults often arrive moving cautiously, worried about falling and reluctant to push themselves.

Once the activity feels more like a game than a therapy session, they tend to move more freely, encourage one another and stay engaged longer. In some cases, he said, people who might otherwise remain seated get up on their own to take another turn.

Korea is where that argument now runs into a system large enough to test it. When asked where Moto Tiles fit best here, Lund did not point first to hospitals or home users. He pointed to senior facilities.

His reasoning was simple: if older adults can stay physically active, cognitively engaged and self-sufficient for longer, they may be able to delay the point at which they need more intensive care. In a fast-aging country, that is less a wellness pitch than an economic one.

Lund said he later met Koh Kwang-sun, chairman of the Seoul chapter of the Korean Senior Citizens Association, to discuss how Moto Tiles could be used in elder care in Korea and what a broader rollout might require. No agreement was announced.

Koh described the technology as fitting a shift in elder care “from simple protection toward prevention and independence.” That is also how Moto Tiles is being positioned in Korea: not as a consumer gadget, but as a tool for senior facilities trying to keep older adults mobile and cognitively engaged for longer.

Lund pointed to Singapore as an example, saying senior facilities there adopted the system with government-backed support after local users produced enough evidence to justify subsidies.