Stable Spoon- innovation from Anupam Pathak

Ten years ago, Anupam Pathak was a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, working on a university lab project to help stabilize stressed soldiers’ rifle barrels. Soldiers shaking with fear, dread, or stress cannot fire accurately, but canceling the shaking stabilizes the aim. Today,, Pathak has used what he learned about canceling human tremor to help the more than 5 percent of the United States population suffering with essential tremor and to help others with neurological diseases like Parkinson’s that can cause trembling. A three-person startup company he founded, Lynx Design, of San Francisco,  released the LiftWare tremor-cancelling spoon under the company’s Lift Labs name. 

Active Cancellation
The technique uses active cancellation hardware, which is currently used in noise-cancelling headphones. As part of his Ph.D. work, Pathak figured out how to make active cancellation hardware small enough to fit within the tremor-cancelling spoon. The utensil stops the bowl of the spoon from moving even while the handle itself may be trembling, which lets users can eat without spilling. 

Pathak did his research before creating the LiftWare spoon. He discovered that today’s tremor-assistive devices usually attempt to cancel movement and for that reason are big, bulky, and inconvenient. “You don’t want to use things like that in public and they don’t even work that well at home,” Pathak said. “Our idea was not to stop the hand from shaking but to cancel its movement. That way, we can make our device really small, the size of an electric toothbrush, and you can use it every day.”

Source:Jean Thilmany

Lab for Assistive Technologies at BVRIT

Dr.B.V.Raju hails from an agricultural family of Kumudavalli Village near Bhimavaram, West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. He graduated in Chemical Engineering from Benaras Hindu University.Started in Cement industry, rose to become CMD of Cement Corporation of India. He became entrepreneur after retirement, promoted Raasi Cement in 1978. It soon emerged as low cost producer with capacity of 1.60mptpa and sold its 32% stake to Indian Cement Ltd in a negotiated deal in 1998.An ailing company Shez  cement was taken over in 1999 and renamed as Anjani Portland cement,followed by Powder Research Centre and BV Raju Institute of Cement Technology.


The entrepreneurial journey changed track with focus on education, several educational institutes were founded in Bheemavaram, Hyderabad. A lab for assistive technologies is in operation in the BV Raju Institute of Technology supported by Prof Alan Rux of UMASS Assistive Technology team. Visited this center on 3rd and the was impressed with zeal and energy of students working on various projects.

AVAZ from Invention Lab, Chennai

Very happy to read about this TePP facilitated innovation in `The Better India'. Dr Gangi Reddy as TUC coordinator connected the innovator Ajit Narayanan to TePP. wish the startup all success. It is another great story from Better India- read on