Making a spoon that helps steady your hand
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
Makers are well placed to help people who have particular needs. By building something specifically designed for a particular person, we can ensure that the item fits their requirements. The team at CuriosityGym worked on a spoon steadying devices to help people with Parkinson's Disease eat. We caught up with them to hear a bit more about the project and here's what they had to say:
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"Parkinson’s disease is a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement. Symptoms start gradually, sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand. Tremors are common, but the disorder also commonly causes stiffness or slowing of movement.
"We were greatly inspired by Liftware Steady (see liftware.com/steady), which is a product sold for this very purpose. We realised early on that this was expected to be a challenging
project and would take the team into the arenas of motion control, physics, and 3D maths that we had a working knowledge of, and this project helped us put our theory into practice. The design was expected to be held in hand, and be able to help cancel out any tremors the person’s hand felt, thus providing the ability to level and steady out a spoon held at the end of the prototype.
You can find out more about the build on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh5gF9k8rV8
Features Editor Andrew trawls the internet for Cool Stuff while keeping the magazine running smoothly.
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