Biomechanics Seminar Series: Aaron Young

The focus of the seminar series is to call for experts related to academia and research in the areas related to biomechanics, variability, motor disorders, physical therapy, and related studies.

Presentation Title: Leveraging internal human biomechanical states to control wearable robotic systems

Presentation Abstract:

New end-to-end task agnostic AI systems have transformed the ability of wearable robotics to provide meaningful assistance to users across a diverse range of daily activities. This talk will present best practices for structuring real-time deep learning systems for wearable robotics that integrate seamlessly with the user’s underlying physiology. Outcome measures from related human subject experiments with test scenarios of these systems will be presented focused on both industrial and recreational tasking. These techniques can be applied to a very broad set of practical problems, and two unique deployment scenarios will be discussed. First, our research team recently completed a clinical trial in mobility impaired individuals from stroke using hip exosuits to enhance daily activities of living. Lastly, balance and stability are a primary struggle for many individuals with mobility deficits yet are very hard problems for wearable robotics to fully address. I will highlight some of our team’s recent successes by leveraging predictive internal state estimation in combination with wearable exoskeletons to improve balance during unstable gait.

About the speaker:

Aaron Young is an Associate Professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow and James R. and Sarah R. Borders Faculty Fellow in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He has directed the Exoskeleton and Prosthetic Intelligent Controls (EPIC) lab since 2016. Dr. Young received his MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on neural and rehabilitation engineering from Northwestern University in 2011 and 2014 respectively. He received a BS degree in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University in 2009. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan in the Human Neuromechanics Lab working with lower limb exoskeletons and powered orthoses to augment human performance. His research area is in advanced control systems for robotic prosthetic and exoskeleton systems for humans with movement impairment. He combines machine learning, robotics, human biomechanics, and control systems to design wearable robots to improve the community mobility of individuals with walking disability. He has received an NIH New Innovator Award (DP2), NIH NCMRR New Investigator award and IEEE New Faces of Engineering award, and his EPIC lab group won the International VIP Consortium Innovation Competition. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and National Academy of Inventors (NAI).