The Problem

Over 10 million people in the United States alone suffer from Essential Tremor. These tremors are caused by uncontrollable shaking in the muscles that make it difficult to perform even simple tasks such as eating, writing, or using the remote. With PenPal, people with Essential Tremor or other forms of active tremor gain the freedom to write freely once again.

Due to the prevalence of this problem but surprising lack of attention to it, we decided to design a solution to stabilizing tremors while writing. Current solutions, such as weighted pens or ring pens, rely solely on gravity or frictional forces to only slightly improve handwriting. We knew there had to be a better way.

Our Solution

PenPal is a tremor canceling pen that combines software and hardware to make a smart solution to a widely experienced problem. It uses active stabilization to counteract tremors much more effectively than solutions currently on the market. Inside, a gimbal mechanism and a stabilization control algorithm work in tandem to stabilize the pen. The outer shell isolates your tremors from the internal pen to make your handwriting tremor-free. With this, our mission is help people with essential tremor write independently again.