Skip to main content

GyroGlove uses gyroscopes to reduce tremors in Parkinson’s patients’ hands

gyroglove uses gyroscopes to reduce tremors in parkinsons patients hands
A spinning top inspired the GyroGlove, a hand-bound device that uses gyroscopes to reduce the effect of hand tremors. A prototype of the high-tech glove has reduced tremors by up to 90 percent and could be a miracle device for Parkinson’s disease patients.

GyroGlove is the brainchild of Faii Ong, who found motivation in the frustration he felt as a 24-year-old medical student caring for a 103-year-old Parkinson’s patient, according to MIT Technology Review. After watching her struggle to consume a bowl of soup, Ong asked a nurse if there was a way to help. He was told there wasn’t.

Two years later, Ong and his company, GyroGear, have a prototype of the GyroGlove. The device is essentially a glove with a small gyroscope attached to the back of the hand in a plastic casing. When the 200-gram, battery-powered GyroGlove is turned on, its “orientation is adjusted by a precession hinge and turntable, both controlled by a small circuit board, thereby pushing back against the wearer’s movements as the gyroscope tries to right itself,” according to MIT Technology Review.

The device was inspired by a simple childhood toy: the spinning top. “Mechanical gyroscopes are like spinning tops: they always try to stay upright by conserving angular momentum,” Ong says. “My idea was to use gyroscopes to instantaneously and proportionally resist a person’s hand movement, thereby dampening any tremors in the wearer’s hand.”

Ong says wearing the GyroGlove “is like plunging your hand into thick syrup, where movement is free but simultaneously slowed.”

GyroGear will release an app to accompany the patent-pending GyroGlove, which will help track the progress of a patient’s tremors and calibrate the device. The startup also has plans to develop similar devices for other parts of the body.

There’s no set date for bringing the GyroGlove to market, but the company is accepting participants for ongoing trials.

Editors' Recommendations

Jason Hahn
Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…
Why AI will never rule the world
image depicting AI, with neurons branching out from humanoid head

Call it the Skynet hypothesis, Artificial General Intelligence, or the advent of the Singularity -- for years, AI experts and non-experts alike have fretted (and, for a small group, celebrated) the idea that artificial intelligence may one day become smarter than humans.

According to the theory, advances in AI -- specifically of the machine learning type that's able to take on new information and rewrite its code accordingly -- will eventually catch up with the wetware of the biological brain. In this interpretation of events, every AI advance from Jeopardy-winning IBM machines to the massive AI language model GPT-3 is taking humanity one step closer to an existential threat. We're literally building our soon-to-be-sentient successors.

Read more
The best hurricane trackers for Android and iOS in 2022
Truck caught in gale force winds.

Hurricane season strikes fear into the hearts of those who live in its direct path, as well as distanced loved ones who worry for their safety. If you've ever sat up all night in a state of panic for a family member caught home alone in the middle of a destructive storm, dependent only on intermittent live TV reports for updates, a hurricane tracker app is a must-have tool. There are plenty of hurricane trackers that can help you prepare for these perilous events, monitor their progress while underway, and assist in recovery. We've gathered the best apps for following storms, predicting storm paths, and delivering on-the-ground advice for shelter and emergency services. Most are free to download and are ad-supported. Premium versions remove ads and add additional features.

You may lose power during a storm, so consider purchasing a portable power source,  just in case. We have a few handy suggestions for some of the best portable generators and power stations available. 

Read more
Don’t buy the Meta Quest Pro for gaming. It’s a metaverse headset first
Meta Quest Pro enables 3D modeling in mixed reality.

Last week’s Meta Connect started off promising on the gaming front. Viewers got release dates for Iron Man VR, an upcoming Quest game that was previously a PS VR exclusive, as well as Among Us VR. Meta, which owns Facebook, also announced that it was acquiring three major VR game studios -- Armature Studio, Camouflaj Team, and Twisted Pixel -- although we don’t know what they’re working on just yet.

Unfortunately, that’s where the Meta Connect's gaming section mostly ended. Besides tiny glimpses and a look into fitness, video games were not the show's focus. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to focus on what seemed to be his company’s real vision of VR's future, which involves a lot of legs and a lot of work with the Quest Pro, a mixed reality headset that'll cost a whopping $1,500.

Read more