Developing an Assisting Device to Reduce the Vibration on the Hands of Elders

In our society, elderly people are one of the most vulnerable classes. At present, aging in the population is becoming a more and more serious issue. This might lead to several diseases related to aging such as Parkinson’s disease. From the viewpoint of assistive techniques, a device for disadvantaged groups should be created to lessen some of the inconveniences in their lives. Therefore, in this paper, a wearable mechanism to suppress axial vibration is proposed for people who suffer from unexpected tremors in their daily lives. Some investigations on Parkinson’s patients were carried out to infer their characteristics. A dynamic model of the gyroscopic system was then analyzed to formulate interactive torques in the working space. The control input was quantified concerning balancing the system state from the kinetic energy and using the feedback linearization technique. The framework of the proposed device was then described via mechanical analysis and prototype design. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, the system’s mathematical dynamics were simulated in a MATLAB environment. In a frequency range of 2–6 Hz, the system response adapted well to axial tremors. Our hardware in the proposed design was tested in different test scenarios such as in non-gyro- and gyro-based tremor suppression for real-world applications. Hand tremors were measured using wearable equipment with various levels of amplitude. From these results, it is clear that our method could have an effectiveness of up to 92.6%, which is considerably better than that in the non-gyro case. Hence, this innovative mechanism is expected to be employed in the fields of medical assistance, health care services, and robotics.

[1]  J. Benito-León,et al.  Incidence of Parkinson disease and parkinsonism in three elderly populations of central Spain , 2004, Neurology.

[2]  R. Elble Defining Dystonic Tremor , 2013, Current neuropharmacology.

[3]  E. Louis,et al.  Revisiting the Clinical Phenomenology of “Cerebellar Tremor”: Beyond the Intention Tremor , 2018, The Cerebellum.

[4]  Y. Zhou,et al.  Characterization of Parkinsonian Hand Tremor and Validation of a High-Order Tremor Estimator , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

[5]  E. Růžička,et al.  Physiotherapy in Parkinson's Disease: Building ParkinsonNet in Czechia , 2017, Parkinson's disease.

[6]  Chin-Hsien Lin,et al.  Time trends in the prevalence and incidence of Parkinson's disease in Taiwan: A nationwide, population-based study. , 2016, Journal of the Formosan Medical Association = Taiwan yi zhi.

[7]  A. Lozano,et al.  The changing landscape of surgery for Parkinson's Disease , 2018, Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society.

[8]  Raffaele Di Gregorio,et al.  A Technique Based on Adaptive Extended Jacobians for Improving the Robustness of the Inverse Numerical Kinematics of Redundant Robots , 2019 .

[9]  Behzad Taheri,et al.  Robust Controller for Tremor Suppression at Musculoskeletal Level in Human Wrist , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

[10]  Tristan Perez,et al.  Analysis of Ship Roll Gyrostabiliser Control , 2009 .

[11]  S. Johansson,et al.  Risk of incident depression in patients with Parkinson disease in the UK , 2011, European journal of neurology.

[12]  Rajesh Pahwa,et al.  Pharmacotherapy of Essential Tremor , 2008, CNS drugs.

[13]  E. Louis Treatment of Essential Tremor: Are there Issues We are Overlooking? , 2011, Front. Neur..

[14]  M. Morris,et al.  Experiences of caregivers of people with Parkinson's disease in Singapore: a qualitative analysis. , 2012, Journal of clinical nursing.

[15]  D. Farina,et al.  Electrical Stimulation of Afferent Pathways for the Suppression of Pathological Tremor , 2017, Front. Neurosci..

[16]  K. Lyons,et al.  Neuropathological changes in essential tremor: 33 cases compared with 21 controls. , 2007, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[17]  T. Dall,et al.  The current and projected economic burden of Parkinson's disease in the United States , 2013, Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society.

[18]  F. Farahmand,et al.  Designing a hand rest tremor dynamic vibration absorber using H2 optimization method , 2014 .

[19]  R. Barker,et al.  Emerging Treatment Approaches for Parkinson’s Disease , 2018, Front. Neurosci..

[20]  W. Poewe,et al.  Management of Motor and Non-Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease , 2013, CNS Drugs.

[21]  N. G. Tsagarakis,et al.  Analysis and Development of a Semiactive Damper for Compliant Actuation Systems , 2013, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[22]  Archana Singh-Manoux,et al.  Parkinson disease male-to-female ratios increase with age: French nationwide study and meta-analysis , 2015, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

[23]  R. Mailman,et al.  Projection of the prevalence of Parkinson's disease in the coming decades: Revisited , 2018, Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society.

[24]  K. Bötzel,et al.  Costs of Parkinson's disease in eastern Europe: a Czech cohort study. , 2010, Parkinsonism & related disorders.

[25]  Hongwei Zhou,et al.  Gut microbiota in patients with Parkinson's disease in southern China. , 2018, Parkinsonism & related disorders.

[26]  Pablo Mir,et al.  Patients with adult‐onset dystonic tremor resembling parkinsonian tremor have scans without evidence of dopaminergic deficit (SWEDDs) , 2007, Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society.

[27]  Ana Luisa Trejos,et al.  Design and validation of a novel mechatronic transmission system for a wearable tremor suppression device , 2017, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[28]  Cameron N. Riviere,et al.  Modeling and canceling tremor in human-machine interfaces , 1996 .

[29]  Bingo Wing-Kuen Ling,et al.  Effectiveness analysis of bio-electronic stimulation therapy to Parkinson's diseases via joint singular spectrum analysis and discrete fourier transform approach , 2020, Biomed. Signal Process. Control..

[30]  Suhasa B. Kodandaramaiah,et al.  Noninvasive Deep Brain Stimulation via Temporally Interfering Electric Fields , 2017, Cell.

[31]  Carlo Menon,et al.  Admittance-Based Voluntary-Driven Motion With Speed-Controlled Tremor Rejection , 2016, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[32]  Behzad Taheri,et al.  Adaptive Suppression of Severe Pathological Tremor by Torque Estimation Method , 2015, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics.

[33]  J. Jankovic,et al.  Botulinum Toxin for the Treatment of Hand Tremor , 2018, Toxins.

[34]  Jonas Christoffersson,et al.  Autophagy and apoptosis dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders , 2014, Progress in Neurobiology.

[35]  Rodger J Elble,et al.  Tremor disorders. , 2013, Current opinion in neurology.