CALM

Controlling Arm-tremor with Lightweight Myo-actuators

01/10/2025 to 31/08/2026

Tremor is a debilitating symptom for many individuals who live with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Patients affected by upper-limb tremor struggle with essential activities of daily living such as eating and writing, and may limit their physical activity, social engagements and travel to avoid embarrassment and frustration. While several treatment modalities have demonstrated efficacy in reducing tremor, many people still live with tremor as the existing treatments are not suitable nor consistently effective. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), though beneficial for selected patients, requires invasive surgery and carries risks that exclude patients with cognitive, psychiatric, or age-related contraindications. Pharmacological therapies, while central to disease management, often lead to significant long-term side effects such as dyskinesias, motor fluctuations, and impulse control disorders. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) lacks the specificity required for tremor suppression, tends to induce rapid muscle fatigue, and is often perceived as uncomfortable. Similarly, non-invasive neuromodulation techniques, such as the Cala kIQ work very well for some patients, but show variable outcomes and may become unreliable—particularly under stress—precisely when symptom control is most needed.
To address this unmet need, researchers in robotics and rehabilitation have begun developing wearable assistive technologies designed to stabilize or compensate for involuntary movements. These devices aim at enhancing patient autonomy, reduce caregiver burden, and improve quality of life for individuals with tremor that is resistant to medication or unsuitable for surgical intervention. However, existing assistive devices are often rigid, heavy, noisy, difficult to control, or tethered to external power sources, all of which compromise their wearability and patient acceptance [1]. For example, while electric motors can provide the speed and precision required to stabilize involuntary movement, they tend to be bulky and cumbersome [2]. These drawbacks have resulted in very few devices reaching the stage of clinical testing on human patients [3], and to our knowledge, no commercially available systems are in widespread use for active tremor suppression.