Parkinson's. wow.

[Jaded]

This might make you find you have dust in your eye...

[Pedaldog.]

That is beautiful.

[T42]

Wonderful.  Having a bit of intention tremor myself - writing is hell and turning a page in the paper can be a bit fiddly - I can imagine how that lassie feels.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

That is an impressive and useful technology.

It isn't the only technology that benefits Parkinson's Disease folk.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/253197.php
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aaY3gz5tJSk

[mrcharly-YHT]

This might make you find you have dust in your eye...

Holy crap that is incredible. Seeing the designer, that moment when she says "I'm on to something, I think I'm on to something."

Genius.

[chrisbainbridge]

Thank you for sharing that

[Zipperhead]

This was also very interesting. Essential Tremor runs in my family and already I only use one of my hands to lift cups.

[barakta]

A disabled friend watched the full programme and she was a bit annoyed by the "inspira-sob" approach of the designers and engineers.

But bar that it sounds like a good combo of technologists, designers and disabled people with a defined need which can be resolved with tech...

[hulver]

I was fairly amazed watching that. Incredible.

From the clip it seemed to be a complete accident as well. The "vibrating spoon" the designer talks about at the start isn't just a vibrating spoon, it uses similar technology to a stedicam to detect and cancel out tremor movements. Not something you can really apply to a whole hand.

So the designers idea of just using vibrations to cancel out the tremors I didn't think would have any effect at all. I'll have to watch the whole program to see if any mention of this is made.

[barakta]

I am wondering if there is some learning technology going on there, where the tremors are measured and then actively cancelled out, or if the user is having to make bigger movements to use the spoon/pen and that works well... It's not a new idea, I've seen it discussed before, but as ever with disability tech it's making it work in practice, then making it marketable in a useful way to those who could/would benefit...

I am a horrible cynic about tech as it's all overhyped until proven otherwise

[mrcharly-YHT]

From what I understood, it isn't actively cancelling out the tremors, it is doing something with interfering the parasympathetic feedback loop. Either it is as simple as just vibrating at the right frequency (I doubt it or it wouldn't have been so hard) or it is detecting the tremor and vibrating at the right frequency to disrupt the feedback loop (I suspect the latter).

That is pretty clever, if not actually technologically all that difficult.

My family has an inherited benign tremor. My mum's was particularly bad and in later life she struggled to carry a tray of drinks without shaking out the contents. Mine was bad enough to make handwriting always difficult for me and shooting sports (which I liked) difficult. I've needed to weld and that is extremely difficult. My nephew has inherited it and is apparently nearly as bad as mum.

Mine has settled a lot with taking topiramate which is interesting.

[barakta]

You can get magic trays which are designed not to tip even if the user is shaking, I tried one once in 1995 at an assistive living centre... Sadly I haven't been able to find them online since.

[BrianI]

Perhaps it is something similar to using white noise to mask out tinnitus?  The "noise" which the hand nerves pick up from the vibrating motors, masks out signals from the brain which cause the tremors? Perhaps if it is just simply vibrating the motors, if used long term the wearer may get "used" to it, thus causing the tremors to come back?

An elegant solution, which looks quite discrete.  Interesting to see what long term results are.