A significant percentage of the world's population suffers from neurological motion disorders. In the United States alone, up to ten million people suffer from Essential Tremor and 1 million suffer from Parkinson's disease. In many of these motion disorders, upper limb tremors can interfere with patients' daily activities such as eating, writing, etc. Medications are variably effective and often come with side effects. Surgical treatments are effective, but they can be costly and are typically reserved for much more severe cases. Improved therapies, therefore, are currently needed.
A handheld tremor cancellation platform has been developed that is noninvasive and actively cancels the transmission of an individual's tremor to an implement being held. The tremor cancellation platform senses the tremor direction and moves the held object in an opposite direction to stabilize it. Because the device compensates for the tremor but does not act to suppress the tremor, it can use much smaller actuators, enabling an extremely lightweight and compact form factor.
Practical attachment of implements improves operation and use of the tremor cancellation platform. Attachment of implements to the tremor cancellation platform must be intuitive, especially for someone with hand tremor, and it must facilitate the overall water-proofing of the device. The implement must also be securely held once attached to the tremor cancellation platform. Traditional attachment techniques have drawbacks that do not satisfy the aforementioned requirements.