I'm a trained first aider, and one of the hardest part of the training was the CPR technique. Training is done on "Resusi-Anne" dolls, mannequins that try to simulate what it is like to give CPR to a real human. However it is quite hard to know if you are doing it right, getting the right rhythm and depth of compression is important to the effectiveness of CPR

A team in the US has used the Wii Remote as a sensor, connected to a PC, to measure the depth and rate of the compressions. This allows the student to see how well they are doing in real time, and adjust their action so that it is more effective.

Watch this video for a demo and an overview by the designers.



I wish I'd had something like this when I was learning CPR.

And if you don't have any first aid training I really recommend it. Hopefully you won't need it very often, but when you do it's great to actually know what you are doing, and you never know, one day you might save someone's life just by knowing a few basic bits of first aid.