A wearable Device GyroGlove Promises to Help Steady Hand Tremors
A wearable Device GyroGlove Promises to Help Steady Hand Tremors by Using an Old Technology—Gyroscopes. by Simon Parkin When he was a 24-year-old medical student living in London, Faii Ong was assigned to care for a 103-year-old patient who suffered from Parkinson’s, the progressive neurological condition that affects a person’s ease of movement. After watching her struggle to eat a bowl of soup, Ong asked another nurse what more could be done to help the woman. “There’s nothing,” he was grimly told. The GyroGlove, designed for Parkinson’s patients, uses gyroscopes to resist a person’s hand movement, thus dampening any tremors. Ong, now 26, didn’t accept the answer. He began to search for a solution that might offset the tremulous symptoms of Parkinson’s, a disease that affects one in 500 people, not through drugs but physics. After evaluating the use of elastic bands, weights, springs, hydraulics, and even soft robotics, Ong settled on a simpler solution, one that he recogn...