Active tremor control in 4-DOFs biodynamic hand model

Abstract

This paper exhibits the performance of the active vibration method in suppressing human hand tremor. The Active Force Control (AFC) and classic Proportional-Derivative (PD) controller are proposed to control the linear electromagnet actuator and applied onto a four Degree-of-Freedoms (4-DOFs) biodynamic model of the human hand to investigate the performance of the controller. The PD controller was designed by using heuristic and optimization method. The Signal Constraint block available in Simulink Response Optimization Toolbox was employed as an optimization technique. Compared to the heuristic method, this proves to be a far more time and energy efficient approach to obtain satisfactory results. Findings show that the combination of AFC and classic PD controller provides a significant improvement in reducing tremor error. The simulation work could be used as the initial stage to study and develop an anti tremor device.