01
Approach
I had this idea clear in my mind that I have to make something around healthcare products,
which people can actually use in their daily life.
There are many disease in this world which can be cured using smart use of technology.
One such disease is, Parkinson’s Disease.
Patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease have serious tremor that happens whenever they try to
grab something with their hands. More accurately it happens whenever they focus on the part
of their body because their brain is damaged thus cannot control the body on their will.
Major disadvantage that comes with this symptom is not being able to eat on their own.
However, using this self-stabilizing spoon, we can fix this.
I googled if there was a decent solution for them and found a decent self-stabilizing
spoon made for them already. However, I wanted to try it out by myself with Arduino so
that I can maybe find some things to improve while making it.
02
Functions
It is obvious that I will use some kind of sensor which could measure tilt and acceleration.
Moreover there will a battery in the model itself, which will be rechargeable.
There will a grip handle to hold it comfortably and a suspension to absorb extra shocks.
The top part can be easily replaced by any utensil and can be used as a spoon, fork etc.
Even though this spoon vibrates, turns, tilts, or even reverses, this spoon will remain
in the position where the food it carries does not fall. So that sufferers of tremor and
Parkinson's disease can eat food voraciously independently. This will have an
embedded computer that will take motion signals detected by tremor sensors. Then,
this spoon will fight vibration by moving in the opposite direction.
It will share real time data analytics regarding tremor patterns of the patient to
the guardians. It will show weather the condition of patient is improving
or deteoriating through analysing tremor error patterns in different axes and
comparing it to previous data. It will also show, when the patient is using the device and
battery percentage.
03
Rough Sketch
Here's a hand drawn rough sketch for the spoon.
04
Tools
The tentative rough list of components required in this project will be:
1. A programmable micro-controller
2. Sensors and Transducers
3. Servo Motors
4. A battery
5. Online App Integration Support and Bluetooth Module
6. 3D Printed components
Skills which will be used are:
1. Methods of programming
2. Typical Mathematical functions and Algorithms
3. Debugging errors
4. CAD Drawing for the Tool
5. Mobile App interface design
6. Proper knowledge of circuit and filter graphs
The challenges I foresee are: The input values should be smoothly processed to motor and
should not make a clumsy move. A good algorithm should be planned to implement this.
Another challenge I see is to fit all these components inside a grippable smooth box.
A tentative timeline which i plan is:
End of February - Have almost completed the algorithm part and to decide which specific
components will be used to make the project by name.
End of March - Has modelled the CAD drawing, got it printed and has tested the algorithm
on a small-scale prototype and debugged the errors.
End of April - Integrated the model and the sensors and it should finally work as expected.
Has also developed the Phone UI support for the tool.