The problem we were assigned was to create a project around having healthy individuals be able to empathize with those who have a specific disease.

We chose parkinson's due to the physical nature of the symptoms. We felt that physical symptoms could be best represented mechanically versus mental symptoms. Of the many symptoms associated with Parkinson’s disease, we chose to represent hand tremors and poor posture. This was done through the use of mounting motors to the back of the user's hands.

The main problem we were trying to solve was the inability for people to experience parkinson’s disease. It is hard for people in general to experience what life might be like to actually have those symptoms.  With our project the participant gets to physically experience what the disease is actually like. They will understand the struggles associated with the disease and how much harder life becomes. We accomplished this through creating two hand modules and one back brace forcing the poor posture of parkinson’s victims.

Our project is built of two hand modules and one back piece. In our hand modules each hand was powered by a single motor. The module was build around the single motor as it was the main source of movement and power. We designed the motor to be encased with a wooden walls connecting on a bottom base. This base board is then strapped to the back of the hand through the use of velcro. Atop the motor lies a gear which is meshed to a wooden ellipse. On the opposite side of the ellipse lies a hole fitted with a M6 screw and two M6 nuts. This provides the weight needed to make the hand tremor.

We faced many challenges over the progression of our project. Our first main problem was determining how we should mount the motor on the hand. At first we thought that we would use a glove, but we soon realized we needed to use straps for additional tightness. Our next problem revolved around the soldering. Since the two wires traveling from the battery to the motor were soldered to the motor, it could easily be pulled off. We ended up breaking the solder off twice. Our final problem was beyond our control. The motors we were using were on the cheaper side and could burn out easily. To cope with this, we had to monitor motor head and make sure not to run the motor for extended periods of time.  

We had many iterations for the different aspects of the project. At first we began to decide on the ellipse size which we made far too large the first time. We ended up lowing the size of the ellipse two more times until we found the size we wanted. Do to the smaller size and faster rotation, we had to add an 20mm M6 and two nuts to the end of the ellipse to create more of a tremor.

We had many cardboard iterations of our back brace that we designed. Designing the back brace was exceptionally hard because no two humans have the same structure. We decided that we would make the brace more accepting to broader ranges of people. To do this we created rounder and more forgiving edges, and made them less intense. This way the brace fit a larger selection of people.

We faced two iterations when creating the box to hold the batteries. Our first iteration was too big for our preference and the extra size was not necessary. The extra size also made it harder for the user to access the batteries for switching out the old. We ended up lowering the size down on the edges making it more comfortable to wear.