Project Making Life Easier for Parkinson's Patients from PAU Academician

Dr. Erdem Dilmen said: “In this project, it is proposed to develop a stabilizing spoon system that will reduce the effect of involuntary tremors in the hands of tremor and Parkinson's patients during meals and facilitate the eating action of the patient, and a method that will work with this system. The spoon will do active vibration damping. In the product we have developed, the spoon will have a body to be held, and this body will contain the necessary electronics with a coating. The control algorithm that will work in the spoon will balance the tip of the spoon attached to the body. This tip is the bowl of the spoon that holds the food. Our aim here is to keep the tip of the spoon in balance despite the unwanted vibrations in the hand/arm muscles of the patient and prevent the food from spilling out of the spoon. In addition to the use of this spoon for patients, it will also be presented to doctors with an additional decision support system that will help neurologists decide during the examination whether a person has Tremor or Parkinson's. For this purpose, machine learning techniques will also be used.”