Design and fabrication of a novel passive hand tremor attenuator

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease is most highly recognised by tremors of the hands that occur in those afflicted with the disease. Though the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease involving motor function begin with very slight tremors of the hands, they further develop into issues such as difficulty swallowing, severe postural problems and extremely limited mobility. In this study, a method of reducing these tremors that appear during the early stages of the disease is developed by creating a wearable passive device that reduces vibrations of the hand and arm through the use of magnetic actuators. The proposed wearable technology has surpassed other known alternatives in selected testing scenarios while possessing a light weight of only 120 grams.

Keywords:

• Vibration isolator
• vibration absorber
• tremor attenuator
• magnetic spring
• parkinson’s tremor

Acknowledgement

The authors thank the University of British Columbia and the NSERC/DG for financially supporting this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The present work was financially supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [NSERC/DG].

Notes on contributors

Mehdi Masoumi

Many of the results presented herein, and portions of the text, are borrowed from Mehdi Masoumi's MASc thesis [17] and copyright permission was obtained from the owner.