Parkinson’s disease affects the nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine. Symptoms of the disease include muscle rigidity, tremors, and changes in speech and gait.
According to medical experts, there is no known cure for Parkinson’s disease. After diagnosis, treatments can help reduce the symptoms. Patients will have to take many drugs, which some may not even be effective.
Arguably, the most devastating symptom of the disease is the tremors or the shaking of the body. The shaking limits patients from engaging in everyday activities. Patients struggle to do their chores such as driving, eating and writing among others.
To solve this problem, a medical student of Imperial College London has invented a hand glove that reduces the tremors significantly. According to MIT’s Technology Review, the student named Faii Ong was assigned to care for a 103-year-old patient who suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
After Ong watched the patient struggle to eat a bowl of soup because of the tremors, he decided to look for a solution to assist in their living.
After thinking outside the box, Ong evaluated the use of elastic bands, weights, springs, hydraulics, and even soft robotics. However, none of these seem the best solution to what he was looking for. Finally, Ong settled on something that he recognized from his childhood toys. Ong explained that the “Mechanical gyroscopes are like spinning tops: they always try to stay upright by conserving angular momentum. My idea was to use gyroscopes to instantaneously and proportionally resist a person’s hand movement, thereby dampening any tremors in the wearer’s hand.”
Having settled on the gyroscopes, together with a number of other students in the college, they developed the first prototype of the device called GyroGlove.
The device uses a miniature dynamically adjustable gyroscope, which sits on the back of the hand within a plastic casing attached to the glove’s material. When the device is switched on, the battery-powered gyroscope whirs to life. Its orientation is adjusted by a precession hinge and turntable, both controlled by a small circuit board, thereby pushing back against the wearer’s movements as the gyroscope tries to right itself.
According to patients who had the opportunity of wearing the glove during the testing period, the experience is like plunging your hand into thick syrup, where movement is free but simultaneously slowed. During the trial, it was discovered that the glove is capable of reducing tremors by up to 90%.
The team is currently working to reduce the size of the glove and the noise it produces. Alison McGregor, professor of musculoskeletal biodynamics at Imperial College, who has mentored the team, said the device holds great promise and could have a significant impact on users’ quality of life.
When the noise and the size of the glove is reduced, Ong and his team will start producing the device in quantity so that it could be available to patients.
Ong has already established a company called GyroGear, which will market the device. It is said the glove could cost between $550 and $850 when it starts selling. It will start selling in the United Kingdom, possibly before the end of 2016.
Ong was quoted as saying “Gyroscopes must be balanced properly according to the speeds at which they are operating. Simple as they are, being able to spin them silently and reliably at thousands of RPM is another key challenge.”
Ong said he has plans to address other tremors elsewhere in the body, such as the legs. He also believed that his device could be used in professional contexts where the wearer requires a steady hand, such as surgery, photography and even sports.
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