How does an ex-army medic use the same laws of physics behind spinning tops and aircrafts to give a 55-year-old much-needed independence, help a mother care properly for her children and stop a 10-year-old from being bullied?
A reasonable amount of tech start-ups talk often about “disruption,” killer apps and blowing the competition out the water. If Faii Ong, inventor of GyroGear, wants to “disrupt” anything however, it’s disability.
That’s the ethos behind ambitious new 13-part video series The Trailblazers, where my team and I discover and showcase those inventors whose ventures tangibly use tech for meaningful social impact.
As producer of the Telefonica-backed series, I had to be very particular about the 13 inventors we featured – Faii made the cut instantly. His hardware is comprised of gyroscopes that spin at speeds faster than a jet engine.
Faii’s target? The 10 million people with Parkinson’s disease and 200 million with Essential Tremor (many of whom remain undiagnosed despite this being one of the most common adult neurological disorders).
Currently in first prototype stage, the GyroGlove packs multiple advanced mechanical gyroscopes into a garment that patients can wear on their hands. These gyroscopes and accelerometers are tiny enough to fit into a glove, but powerful enough to stabilise the hand.
This begs a number of questions: how do you create something so powerful, and yet so wearable? How can the GyroGlove stop patients’ hands from shaking and yet allow fluid movement? What’s the full story behind Faii’s own journey, from the Singapore Army to Imperial College?
And really, where do you find miniaturised gyroscopes?!
I’d love for you to watch as we unravel this fascinating story.
Shivvy Jervis is producer of The Trailblazers and Digital Futures. Follow her on Twitter @shivvyjervis
The Trailblazers is backed by Telefonica. Filming for series one has wrapped, but get in touch with @shivvyjervis if you’d like to nominate yourself for series two or to collaborate on the next edition being filmed in 2016.
