People with Parkinson's Disease can have a problem call "Freezing of Gait" that can cause them to walk in a shaky and weak manner. Researchers
at the VA have been working with Augmented Reality glasses to help steady that gait:
AR wearables can also help patients with Parkinson’s disease, which causes tremors and stiffness. These people often have a perplexing characteristic known as motor block or freezing of gait (FOG)—the sudden inability to initiate a step or stride—putting them at risk for serious falls. FOG occurs more frequently when someone is coming to a turn, changing direction, maneuvering in a closed space, or passing through a doorway.
Some Parkinson’s disease patients with FOG can walk with a nearly normal stride when presented with the proper visual cues. In the 1990s, podiatrist Thomas Riess, of San Anselmo, Calif., who himself has Parkinson’s, developed several early augmented-reality devices for superimposing such cues. He patented a head-mounted array of LEDs that projects a scrolling ladder of bars on a transparent screen in front of the patient. In tests, Riess’s device was able to improve his own and other Parkinson’s disease patients’ ability to walk without freezing.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electron...gmented-reality
