Abstract
This paper focuses on the development of an experimental rig which was designed as an apparatus to induce vibration along the model of hand-arm to simulate the human postural tremor and proposed a smart glove incorporated with piezoelectric actuator for effective control over the tremor produced by the experimental rig. Intra Vernacular (IV) Training arm is used to represent the human hand-arm and two DC motors with unbalance masses are used as the source of excitation. Thus, this creates a quivering hand-arm model which represents the behavior of postural tremor phenomenon. The quantification assessment of human hand tremor and the experimental rig are measured and recorded at the palm. In this paper, the experimental results are divided into two parts; actual human hand tremor and model hand-arm tremor. Both experiments were done by wearing the glove to evaluate the effectiveness of the glove in reducing hand tremor. The displacement and acceleration are measured and recorded on the model using light-weight accelerometer and laser displacement sensor respectively. A piezoelectric actuator is employed as the main active element for the compensation of the disturbances. The results are considered as raw data that can be used for further analysis of human tremor especially for Parkinson's disease patients, which can later be used to assist in developing control strategies that is needed as an input for the piezoelectric actuator or in the design of a device that can suppress the hand tremor vibration. The presented system is notable for simplicity and low cost.