Skip to main content

The next thing for treating Parkinson’s symptoms could be … laser shoes?

parkinsons laser shoes path finder closed shoe
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Parkinson’s disease is a long-term degenerative movement disorder which affects an estimated 1 million Americans, and more than 10 million people worldwide. One of the symptoms of Parkinson’s is something called gait freezing, in which sufferers are unable to take a step forward, despite their best intentions. Fortunately, a new high-tech solution may be here to help — and, like the best high-tech solutions, it involves lasers.

At the Netherland’s University of Twente, researchers have been working with a pair of laser shoes designed to deal with exactly this scenario. The shoes use a laser projection device that is mounted on the toe, which generates a straight line that follows around 18 inches ahead of its wearer. This line helps guide wearers forward, so that they no longer feel as if their feet are glued to the floor.

Recommended Videos

“In our study recently published in Neurology, we found that in the lab, laser shoes were able to reduce by half the frequency and duration of freezing episodes,” researcher Murielle Ferraye told Digital Trends. “That laser shoes work by providing a rhythmic and spatial target for patients to step towards can help Parkinson’s disease patients walk again may seem surprising. However, this increased receptivity of Parkinson patients to visual information [has been] known for decades, and is inherent to the disease itself. Parkinson’s disease indeed affects automatic movements. Patients may compensate for this lack of automaticity by paying more attention to their movements. In this context, external cues help them focus on their stepping movements, hereby bypassing the disrupted automatic circuit in the brain and shifting to a more conscious way of walking.”

Laser cue shoe (met laser aan)

The laser is operated by a pressure-sensitive switch under the sole of the shoe. It turns off when a person’s foot is lifted, and back on when they place their foot back down. The laser is oriented to project its beam orthogonally, in front of the patient’s opposite foot that is about to be lifted. The laser line acts as a visual cue and is tuned exactly to the stepping frequency of the patients, thereby making it a closed-loop system.

At present, such a device isn’t publicly available in the U.S. as far as we are aware. However, in Europe and Turkey, the company Walk With Path manufactures a shoe attachment called Path Finder which works in this way by projecting a laser line in front of wearers’ feet for each step they take. “Path Finder is [currently] available directly on our website for users based in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and Turkey,” company founder Lise Pape told Digital Trends. “We are working on making it available in the U.S., Australia, and Canada in the near future.”

Luke Dormehl
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Range Rover’s first electric SUV has 48,000 pre-orders
Land Rover Range Rover Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition

Range Rover, the brand made famous for its British-styled, luxury, all-terrain SUVs, is keen to show it means business about going electric.

And, according to the most recent investor presentation by parent company JLR, that’s all because Range Rover fans are showing the way. Not only was demand for Range Rover’s hybrid vehicles up 29% in the last six months, but customers are buying hybrids “as a stepping stone towards battery electric vehicles,” the company says.

Read more
BYD’s cheap EVs might remain out of Canada too
BYD Han

With Chinese-made electric vehicles facing stiff tariffs in both Europe and America, a stirring question for EV drivers has started to arise: Can the race to make EVs more affordable continue if the world leader is kept out of the race?

China’s BYD, recognized as a global leader in terms of affordability, had to backtrack on plans to reach the U.S. market after the Biden administration in May imposed 100% tariffs on EVs made in China.

Read more
Tesla posts exaggerate self-driving capacity, safety regulators say
Beta of Tesla's FSD in a car.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is concerned that Tesla’s use of social media and its website makes false promises about the automaker’s full-self driving (FSD) software.
The warning dates back from May, but was made public in an email to Tesla released on November 8.
The NHTSA opened an investigation in October into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with the FSD software, following three reported collisions and a fatal crash. The investigation centers on FSD’s ability to perform in “relatively common” reduced visibility conditions, such as sun glare, fog, and airborne dust.
In these instances, it appears that “the driver may not be aware that he or she is responsible” to make appropriate operational selections, or “fully understand” the nuances of the system, NHTSA said.
Meanwhile, “Tesla’s X (Twitter) account has reposted or endorsed postings that exhibit disengaged driver behavior,” Gregory Magno, the NHTSA’s vehicle defects chief investigator, wrote to Tesla in an email.
The postings, which included reposted YouTube videos, may encourage viewers to see FSD-supervised as a “Robotaxi” instead of a partially automated, driver-assist system that requires “persistent attention and intermittent intervention by the driver,” Magno said.
In one of a number of Tesla posts on X, the social media platform owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a driver was seen using FSD to reach a hospital while undergoing a heart attack. In another post, a driver said he had used FSD for a 50-minute ride home. Meanwhile, third-party comments on the posts promoted the advantages of using FSD while under the influence of alcohol or when tired, NHTSA said.
Tesla’s official website also promotes conflicting messaging on the capabilities of the FSD software, the regulator said.
NHTSA has requested that Tesla revisit its communications to ensure its messaging remains consistent with FSD’s approved instructions, namely that the software provides only a driver assist/support system requiring drivers to remain vigilant and maintain constant readiness to intervene in driving.
Tesla last month unveiled the Cybercab, an autonomous-driving EV with no steering wheel or pedals. The vehicle has been promoted as a robotaxi, a self-driving vehicle operated as part of a ride-paying service, such as the one already offered by Alphabet-owned Waymo.
But Tesla’s self-driving technology has remained under the scrutiny of regulators. FSD relies on multiple onboard cameras to feed machine-learning models that, in turn, help the car make decisions based on what it sees.
Meanwhile, Waymo’s technology relies on premapped roads, sensors, cameras, radar, and lidar (a laser-light radar), which might be very costly, but has met the approval of safety regulators.

Read more