Handheld Tremor Stabilization Tool With Sensor-Driven Countermotion
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Solution Overview
Problem
Chronic neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's Disease and Essential Tremor cause severe unintentional muscle movements, significantly impacting daily activities, and current treatments like medication and deep brain stimulation are non-optimal due to variability in effectiveness and invasiveness.
Innovation Solution
A handheld tool equipped with a tremor tracking module and sensors that detect and stabilize unintentional muscle movements by generating equal and opposite motions to cancel out tremors, allowing users to perform daily tasks with reduced interference.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If medication or deep brain stimulation is used to treat tremors, then tremor symptoms are reduced, but treatment effectiveness varies and invasive procedures carry risks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces pharmacological and surgical interventions with a mechanical stabilization system. Sensors detect tremor movements and a motorized mechanism generates compensatory motions to counteract the tremors, providing a non-invasive alternative to medication and deep brain stimulation that offers more consistent and controllable effectiveness.
2Ease of operation
If a handheld tool is used by a user with tremors, then daily tasks can be performed, but unintentional muscle movements cause significant degradation in task performance
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary stabilization mechanism between the user's hand and the handheld tool. The system includes sensors that detect tool movement and a motorized mechanism that generates compensatory motions, acting as a mediator to filter out tremor effects and improve task performance quality while maintaining ease of operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system employs real-time feedback through sensors that continuously monitor the handheld tool's movement and feed this information to a control mechanism. The controller adjusts the motorized stabilization mechanism dynamically to counteract detected tremors, creating a closed-loop system that maintains high task performance quality throughout use.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods for tracking unintentional muscle movements of a user and stabilizing a handheld tool while it is being used by the user are described. The method may include detecting motion of a handle of the handheld tool manipulated by a user while the user is performing a task with a user-assistive device attached to an attachment arm of the handheld tool. Furthermore, the method may include storing the detected motion in a memory of the handheld tool as motion data. The method may also include controlling, based on the motion data, a motion-generating mechanism of the handheld tool that moves the attachment arm relative to the handle in a single degree of freedom in a direction of the detected motion of the handle.