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Essential tremor suppression by a novel self-balancing device

2014; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0309364614525185

1746-1553

Jakkrapun Chuanasa, Szathys Songschon,

Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials

There are many associated devices using impedance method. However, they cannot completely suppress tremor. Other methods using active vibration control have been a challenging problem for industrial and academic researchers. Potential applications of the latter for tremor patients are still not realized.This article presents a novel method for suppressing human lower arm tremor in essential tremor by using a self-balancing technique.In this article, a rotating unbalanced mass actuator was used to imitate an arm tremor with the same frequency range obtained from clinical sources. A novel counter-balance device was designed to attach the fictitious arm. The tremor reduction is expecting quantitatively.A Proportional-Integral-Derivative controller and an algorithm programmed in LabVIEW are proposed to control a rotating unbalanced mass actuator, anti-shaker, in order to counter the tremor. The self-balancing system for the new approach was obtained when both amplitudes and frequencies of anti-shaker and tremor are the same.The results show that this method can reduce vibration of tremor in the order of 0.001 rad/s(2).This method can suppress the vibration and can also auto-tune to counter the tremor in a range of 4-12 Hz bandwidth.The therapy of arm tremor was associated with using counter-devices to palliate the vibration magnitude. Conventional methods such as physical surgery and drugs cannot completely eliminate tremor. The novel counter-device is an alternative technique with promising application for clinical uses for tremor patients without involving harmful surgery.