Aaron Young is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering and is interested in designing and improving powered orthotic and prosthetic control systems for persons with stroke, neurological injury or amputation. His previous experience includes a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan in the Human Neuromechanics Lab working with exoskeletons and powered orthoses to augment human performance. He has also worked on the control of upper and lower limb prostheses at the Center for Bionic Medicine (CBM) at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. His master's work at CBM focused on the use of pattern recognition systems using myoelectric (EMG) signals to control upper limb prostheses. His dissertation work at CBM focused on sensory fusion of mechanical and EMG signals to enable an intent recognition system for powered lower limb prostheses for use by persons with a transfemoral amputation.
Powered prosthesis; EMG signal processing. Young's research is focused on developing control systems to improve prosthetic and orthotic systems. His research is aimed at developing clinically translatable research that can be deployed on research and commercial systems in the near future. Some of the interesting research questions are how to successfully extract user intent from human subjects and how to use these signals to allow for accurate intent identification. Once the user intent is identified, smart control systems are needed to maximally enable individuals to accomplish useful tasks. For lower limb devices, these tasks might include standing from a seated position, walking, or climbing a stair. We hope to improve clinically relevant measures with powered mechatronic devices, including reducing metabolic cost, improving biomechanics and decreasing the time required to perform daily tasks of living.