Belt for Parkinson's Disease Patients

Freeze of gait is a symptom of Parkinson’s disease that causes patients to suddenly freeze up while they are walking. However, research has shown that these patients do not have any freeze of gait episodes while walking upstairs or on zebra patterned crosswalks. Using the DragonBoard™ 410c from Arrow Electronics, this project is designed to create an illusion on the road/floor as to appear like there is a zebra patterned crosswalk or staircase in an attempt at minimizing freeze of gait episodes for those living with Parkinson’s.

Objective

The main objective of this project is to find a simple and elegant solution to assist Parkinson’s disease patients with freeze of gait episodes. One of our team member’s father is a Parkinson’s patient who often experiences these freeze of gait episodes, so we viewed this project as an opportunity to create something that used our engineering backgrounds and could make a difference in the community. The project is designed to capture the image of the surface the person walks on via a camera, use a python script to print a staircase illusion on this image and then finally project this image back to the floor. When the patient climbs on a staircase, he or she can manually disable this device with a simple button press. Such a device can be designed to be mounted on a patient’s belt.

Materials Required / Parts List / Tools

• DragonBoard 410c boards
• 12V wall adapter
• USB Camera

Source Code / Source Examples / Application Executable

• Github repository

Build / Assembly Instructions

This project setup includes the following connections:

1. Interface a camera with the DragonBoard 410c using the USB port.
2. Interface a display using the HDMI port.
3. Copy the source code (staircase_add.py).
4. Run the python script.