Development of an Active Dynamic Vibration Absorber for Palm Tremors in Parkinson's Disease Patients

Parkinson’s patients experience severe pathological tremors because of abnormality of central oscillator that entrains the corticothalamic system and the basal ganglia. Normally, medications are used to decrease involuntary antagonistic muscle contraction can affect life, therefore, safe treatment methods have attention. The mechanical vibration absorber is an outstanding method, and can be used as an alternative treatment. Based on the biodynamics of the human arm, the objective of this study is to provide the performance of Parkinson’s patients and to design a model-free control to suppress their pathological tremor, called an active dynamic vibration absorber system (DVAs). An active DVA with model-free control inside can handle the complex system, disturbances, complicated working behavior, and so forth. Frequency of resting tremor as resonance frequencies of shoulder and elbow muscle is activation operating. The response of the active DVAs is studied in the case that it is attached to the arm and compared to the passive DVA with excitation frequencies in the previous study. The results verify the effectiveness of active DVA with controller inside, which can reduce the pathological tremor in amplitude feature in Parkinson's patient’s arm.