Faculty Directory

Roy, Anindo

Roy, Anindo

Associate Professor
Maryland Applied Graduate Engineering
Maryland Robotics Center
Human Motor Performance Laboratory, 209 W Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Dr. Anindo Roy is an Associate Professor of Neurology in the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Adjunct Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the University of Maryland, A. James Clark School of Engineering, and Faculty at the Maryland Robotics Center, Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland at College Park. In addition, he serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for NextStep Robotics, Inc., a company that manufactures portable ankle exoskeleton technology. Prior to his current positions, Dr. Roy held prestigious postdoctoral fellowships at Georgia Institute of Technology and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Roy conducts research in rehabilitation robotics, specifically in the development and clinical testing of ankle robotic technology for rehabilitation of gait and mobility function in neurologically disabled populations.

Background: My training and research interests are in the areas of automatic control systems, rehabilitation robotics, biomechanics modeling, human-robot interaction control, and novel methodologies including robot-based and other instrumented assessments of physical and mobility function. After training under the pioneers of impedance control and rehabilitation robotics (Neville Hogan, Hermano Krebs), my work over the past 10 years has synergized these areas to address a single overarching need: develop and deploy therapeutic robotics and interactive information technologies to restore functional independence in those with mobility disabilitiesresulting from cerebrovascular disease (stroke) and other neurologic injuries, and aging. Toward this end, I have spearheaded the engineering development and clinical testing of an ankle robot exoskeleton (ABOT) for task-oriented neurorehabilitation, in stroke and other disability conditions.
 
Evidence Guided Technology Development: Since 2009 my research has focused on the design and testing of ABOT-assisted seated visually guided-evoked isolated ankle interventions, as well as treadmill-integrated gait training. The former has shown benefits in paretic ankle motor control and impairments leading improved overground walking, in both chronic and sub-acute stroke The latter has included clinical testing of a gait event-triggered adaptive control system that integrates ABOT into task-oriented treadmill walking exercise in chronic stroke survivors with residual hemiparetic gait deficits, such as foot drop. This technological breakthroughallows for the first time, a deficit-adjusted robotic gait therapy--one that links robotic support to specific functional deficits of hemiparetic gait in a manner that accommodates in real-time, step-to-step variability during walking thereby ensuring robust human-robot stability and patient safety. Its unique features include: customized therapy to individual gait deficit profiles, “on-the-fly” robotic tuning, calibration with recovery profiles, and performance-based/motor learning guided robotic progression, both step-by-step and across sessions, to optimize ankle neuromotor learning and maximize locomotor function. This approach has shown unprecedented benefits in chronic stroke, reversing foot drop, restoring push-off forces, and correcting heel-first landings, in just 6 weeks. This control framework is now being advanced to build and refine a clinical-data driven Artificial Intelligence (supervised machine learning) repository, the first of its kind in any brain injured population that would enable co-operative robotic training of walking, dynamic balance and real-world, diverse activities of daily living (ADL) mobility tasks in stroke. Engineering is already underway to provide clinicians/therapists, a “suite” of task- and disease-specific adaptive controllers that will provide individualized robotic prescription strategies.
 
Research Trajectory: Current research foci include: (1) Clinical testing of adaptive control ankle robotics for treadmill gait training (TMR) in chronic stroke and subjects with neuro-orthopedic injuries that cause foot drop, as well as investigating comparative efficacy of TMR against other therapeutic modalities such as traditional PT and TM-alone. While my prior work has focused on the effects of ABOT interventions on gait and balance biomechanics, new data suggest that individualized robotic therapies such as TMR may also positively impact cardiometabolic fitness in chronic stroke. Hence, my research has diversified to investigate longer-term (e.g. 3- or 6 months) TMR and its effects on health and mobility function beyond gait biomechanics and ankle neuromotor control (cardiometabolic/ vascular, metabolic cost, muscle and molecular and epigenetic mechanisms); (2) Modifying ABOT adaptive controller to conduct training of ADLs beyond treadmill walking, include overground mobility sub-tasks such as stepping and staircase walking; (3) Development and clinical testing of a portable, low-cost ABOT to provide patients with continued ABOT therapy outside of the clinic/lab and after cessation of clinical studies; and (4) Development and testing of scalable and cost-effective telerehabilitation technologies (IVET) to disseminate proven task-oriented exercise models from point-of-care (center) into the home for those with stroke and age-related mobility deficits. This unique technology will enable translation of our protocols for safe, effective administration, and ultimately increase access, quality, and continuity of exercise rehabilitation therapies for chronic disease management.

My direct teaching at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has entailed the development of new courses to meet the needs of students, and complement evolving research. I introduce elements from my own research into course content, such that future practitioners, scientists, and engineers are best trained for research/academic careers. My teaching approach blends lecture content with interactive, hands-on experiences for maximum engagement and impact. In order to attract the best engineering student talent for our neuro-robotics research and as part of the UM Board of Regents mission to “bridge campuses”, I teach a senior-level elective “Assistive robotics” (ENME444) and a graduate elective “Rehabilitation Robotics” (ENPM808J) at the University of Maryland, College Park. My formal mentoring (HP-STAR, MARC-USTAR Program, curriculum based Independent Study) has spanned across both education levels (STEM students, postdoctoral scholars, medical students) and disciplines (engineering, medicine, allied health sciences). My mentoring approach is highly “goal driven”, with emphasis on tangible outputs in the form of publications, posters, or presentations to set clear goals for mentees, while affording objective evaluation of/by the mentor. Many of my mentees are pursuing their pre- and postdoctoral careers at prestigious places (UC Irvine-Mechanical Engineering, Brown University-Computational Neuroscience, UMCP-Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Army Research Lab).

  1. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID stabilization of a position-controlled manipulator with wrist sensor. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Control Applications, 1:209-14, 2002.
  2. Iqbal, K., Roy, A. PID controller design for the human-arm robot manipulator coordination problem. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, 121-24, 2002.
  3. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. Contributors to postural stabilization: a modeling-simulation study. Proceedings of the IEEE-NIST Conference on Performance Metrics, 1-6, 2003.
  4. Iqbal, K., Roy, A., Imran, M. Passive and active contributors to postural stabilization. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, 5:4502-07, 2003.
  5. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID controller stabilization of a single-link biomechanical model with multiple delayed feedbacks. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, 1:642-47, 2003.
  6. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID controller design for first-order-plus-dead-time model via Hermite-Biehler theorem. Proceedings of the American Control Conference, 6:5286-91, 2003.
  7. Roy, A., Iqbal, K., Atherton, D.P. On using prioritized optimization in sampled-data control systems: a new variable weight. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Control Applications, 1:764-69, 2003.
  8. Roy, A., Iqbal, K., Atherton, D.P. New criteria for model reduction of sampled-data control systems. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, 146-51, 2003.
  9. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID Stabilization of a position-controlled robot manipulator acting independently or in collaboration with human arm. Journal of Arkansas Academy of Sciences, 57:131-39, 2003.
  10. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID stabilization of a position-controlled manipulator with wrist Sensor. Society of Manufacturing Engineers Technical Paper, 129:1-7, 2003.
  11. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID Stabilization of a Single-Link Biomechanical Model with Control Effort Constraints. Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Control Applications, 441:018, 2004.
  12. Roy, A., Iqbal, K., Atherton, D.P. Optimum tuning of PI-PD controllers for unstable sampled-data control systems. Proceedings of the Asian Control Conference, 1:478-85, 2004.
  13. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. Analytical framework for constraining the initial control effort in a biomechanical model. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Control Applications, 1:562-67, 2004.
  14. Iqbal, K., Roy, A. Robust stabilization in a single-link biomechanical model: a time-domain analysis. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Systems, Man & Cybernetics, 1:847-52, 2004.
  15. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. Analytical framework for jerk minimization in a single-link biomechanical model with feedback delays. Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Biomechanics, 463:017, 2004.
  16. Iqbal, K. Roy, A. Stabilizing PID controllers for an inverted pendulum-based biomechanical model with position, velocity, and force feedback. Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, 126(6): 838-43, 2004.
  17. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. Synthesis of stabilizing PID controllers for biomechanical models. Proceedings of the IFAC World Congress, 16:1–6, 2005.
  18. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. Optimization of goal-oriented voluntary movements. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 4998-5001, 2005.
  19. Roy, A., Iqbal, K. PID controller tuning for first-order-plus-dead-time process via Hermite-Biehler theorem. ISA Transactions, 44(3): 363-78, 2005.
  20. Iqbal, K., Roy, A. Kinematic trajectory generation in a neuromusculoskeletal model with somatosensory and vestibular feedback. Proceedings of the IFAC Symposium on Modeling Control in Biomedical Systems, 363-68, 2006.
  21. Roy, A., Krebs, H.I., Patterson, S.L., Judkins, T.N., Khanna, I., Forrester, L.W., Macko, R.F, Hogan, N. Measurement of human ankle stiffness using the anklebot. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics, 356-63, 2007.
  22. Iqbal, K. Roy, A. A novel theoretical framework for the dynamic stability analysis, movement control, and trajectory generation of a multi-segment biomechanical model. ASME Transactions on Biomechanical Engineering, 131(1):011002, 2009.
  23. Roy, A., Krebs, H.I., Williams, D.J., Bever, C.T., Forrester, L.W., Macko, R.F, Hogan, N. Robot-aided neurorehabilitation: a robot for ankle rehabilitation. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 25(3): 569-82, 2009.
  24. Khanna, I., Roy, A., Rodgers, M.M., Macko, R.F., Krebs, H.I., Forrester, L.W. Effects of unilateral robotic limb loading on gait characteristics in subjects with chronic stroke. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 7(23), 2010.
  25. Forrester, L.W., Roy, A., Krebs, H.I., Macko, R.F. Ankle training with a robotic device improves hemiparetic gait after a stroke. Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, 25(4): 369-77, 2011.
  26. Roy, A., Forrester, L.W., Macko, R.F. Short-term ankle motor performance with ankle robotics training in chronic hemiparetic stroke. Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 48(4): 417-30, 2011.
  27. Roy, A., Krebs, H.I., Bever, C.T., Forrester, L.W., Macko, R.F., Hogan. Measurement of passive ankle stiffness in subjects with chronic hemiparesis using a novel ankle robot. Journal of Neurophysiology, 105(5): 2132-49, 2011.
  28. Roy, A., Krebs, H.I., Barton, J.E., Macko, R.F., Forrester, L.W. Anklebot-Assisted Locomotor Training After Stroke: A Novel Deficit-Adjusted Control Approach. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2175-2182, 2013.
  29. Roy, A., Forrester, L.W., Macko, R.F., Krebs, H.I. Changes in passive ankle stiffness and its effects on gait function in people with chronic stroke. Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, 50(4): 555-72, 2013.
  30. Forrester, L.W., Roy, A., Goodman, R.N., Rietschel, J.C., Barton, J.E., Krebs, H.I., Macko, R.F. Clinical application of a modular ankle robot for stroke rehabilitation. NeuroRehabilitation, 33(1): 85-97, 2013.
  31. Goodman, R.N., Roy, A., Rietschel, J.C., Balasubramanian, S., Forrester, L.W., C.T. Bever. Ankle Robotics Training with Concurrent Psychophysiological Monitoring in Multiple Sclerosis: A Case Report. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics & Biomechatronics, São Paulo, Brazil, 383-397, 2014.
  32. Roy, A., Krebs, H.I., Macko, N.R., Macko, R.F., Forrester, L.W. Facilitating Push-Off Propulsion: A Biomechanical Model for Ankle Robotics Assistance for Plantarflexion Gait Training. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics & Biomechatronics, São Paulo, Brazil, 656-663, 2014.
  33. Goodman, R.N., Rietschel, J.C., Roy, A., Jung, B.C., Diaz, J., Macko, R.F., Forrester, L.W. Increased motivation during ankle robotic training enhances motor control and cortical efficiency in chronic hemiparetic stroke. Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, 51(2): 213-228, 2014.
  34. Forrester, L.W., Roy, A., Krywonis, A., Kehs, G., Krebs, H.I., Macko, R.F. Modular ankle robotics in early sub-acute stroke: A randomized controlled pilot study. Neurorehabilitation & Neural Repair, 28(7): 678-87, 2014.
  35. Kang, C.Y., Conroy, S.S., Roy, A., Bever, C.T. Robotic Assay of Arm Reaching Movements in Diverse Neurologic Populations: Can Movement Features Be Reliable, Disease-Specific Diagnostic Biomarkers? Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), Singapore, 925-930, 2015.
  36. Barton, J.E., Roy, A., Forrester, L.W., Rogers, M., Macko, R.F. A Three-Dimensional Multi-Segmental Model of Balance Maintenance During Volitional Reaching, Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, 138(1):014502, 2016.
  37. Iqbal, K., Altmayer, K.S., Roy, A. PID Controller Synthesis for Improved Dynamic Stability in a DFIG Model. Proceedings of the IEEE Indian Control Conference (ICC), Chennai, India, 2015.
  38. Forrester, L.W.*, Roy, A.*, Hafer-Macko, C., Krebs, H.I., Macko, R.F.  Task-Specific Ankle Robotics Gait Training After Stroke: A Randomized Pilot Study. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 13:51, 2016 (*Shared first authors).
  39. Hafer-Macko, C., Naumes, J., Macko, R.F. Roy, A. Interactive Video Tele-Rehabilitation (IVET): Wireless Technology for Integrative Home Care. Technology Platform for Tele-Rehabilitation Implementation in Mysathenia Gravis at the Point-Of-Care. IEEE-NIH Special Topics Conference on Health Care Innovations and Point-of-Care Technologies (HI-POTC), Cancun, Mexico, 50-53, 2016.
  40. Macko, R.F., Forrester, T., Francis, P., Nelson, G., Hafer-Macko, C., Roy, A. Interactive Video Exercise Tele-Rehabilitation (IVET) for Stroke Care in Jamaica. IEEE-NIH Special Topics Conference on Health Care Innovations and Point-of-Care Technologies (HI-POTC), Cancun, Mexico, 150-153, 2016.
  41. Iqbal, K., Roy, A. Kinematic trajectory generation in a neuromusculoskeletal model with somatosensory and vestibular feedback. In: Modelling and control in biomedical systems (including biological systems), 363-68, First Edition, Feng D.D., Zaytoon J. Editors. Elsevier, 2006. ISBN: 978-0-08-044530-4.
  42. Krebs, H.I., Roy, A., Artemiadis, P.K., Ahn, J., Hogan, N. Beyond Human or Robot Administered Treadmill Training for Stroke. In:  Neurorehabilitation Technology. First Edition, Dietz V., Rymer W.Z., & Nef T., Editors.  233-52, Springer, 2012. ISBN: 1447122763.
  43. Krebs, H.I., Michmizos, K., Susko, T., Lee, H., Roy, A., Hogan, N. Beyond Human or Robot Administered Treadmill Training for Stroke. In:  Neurorehabilitation Technology, Second Edition, David J. Reinkensmeyer, Volker Dietz, Editors. 409-433, Springer International Publishing, 2016. eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-28603-7.
  44. Roy, A., Forrester, L.W., Macko, R.F. Adaptive Control of Modular Ankle Exoskeletons in Neurologically Disabled Populations. In: Adaptive Control for Robotic Manipulators, First Edition, Dan Zhang, Bin Wei, Editors. 172-207, CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
  45. Roy, A., Chornay, C., Forrester, L.W., Hafer-Macko, C., Macko, R.F. Quantifying Human Autonomy During Ankle Robot-Assisted Reversal of Foot Drop After Stroke. IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, Enschede, The Netherlands, 523-530, 2018. 42. Krishna, A., Chandar, S., Bama, R., Roy, A. Novel Interactive Visual Task for Robot-Assisted Gait Training for Stroke Rehabilitation. IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, Enschede, The Netherlands, 402-407, 2018

Maryland Robotics Center launches a new postdoctoral fellowship program

The program will foster multidisciplinary collaborations among Maryland Robotics Center faculty.