NeuroPod: a real-time neuromorphic spiking CPG applied to robotics

Initially, robots were developed with the aim of making our life easier, carrying out repetitive or dangerous tasks for humans. Although they were able to perform these tasks, the latest generation of robots are being designed to take a step further, by performing more complex tasks that have been carried out by smart animals or humans up to date. To this end, inspiration needs to be taken from biological examples. For instance, insects are able to optimally solve complex environment navigation problems, and many researchers have started to mimic how these insects behave. Recent interest in neuromorphic engineering has motivated us to present a real-time, neuromorphic, spike-based Central Pattern Generator of application in neurorobotics, using an arthropod-like robot. A Spiking Neural Network was designed and implemented on SpiNNaker. The network models a complex, online-change capable Central Pattern Generator which generates three gaits for a hexapod robot locomotion. Recon gurable hardware was used to manage both the motors of the robot and the real-time communication interface with the Spiking Neural Networks. Real-time measurements con rm the simulation results, and locomotion tests show that NeuroPod can perform the gaits without any balance loss or added delay.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

An AER handshake-less modular infrastructure PCB with x8 2.5Gbps LVDS serial links

Nowadays spike-based brain processing emulation is taking off. Several EU and others worldwide projects are demonstrating this, like SpiNNaker, BrainScaleS, FACETS, or NeuroGrid. The larger the brain process emulation on silicon is, the higher the communication performance of the hosting platforms has to be. Many times the bottleneck of these system implementations is not on the performance inside a chip or a board, but in the communication between boards. This paper describes a novel modular Address-Event-Representation (AER) FPGA-based (Spartan6) infrastructure PCB (the AER-Node board) with 2.5Gbps LVDS high speed serial links over SATA cables that offers a peak performance of 32-bit 62.5Meps (Mega events per second) on board-to-board communications. The board allows back compatibility with parallel AER devices supporting up to x2 28-bit parallel data with asynchronous handshake. These boards also allow modular expansion functionality through several daughter boards. The paper is focused on describing in detail the LVDS serial interface and presenting its performance.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-02/01Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-02/01Junta de Andalucía TIC-6091Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PRI-PIMCHI-2011-076

From Vision Sensor to Actuators, Spike Based Robot Control through Address-Event-Representation

One field of the neuroscience is the neuroinformatic whose aim is to develop auto-reconfigurable systems that mimic the human body and brain. In this paper we present a neuro-inspired spike based mobile robot. From commercial cheap vision sensors converted into spike information, through spike filtering for object recognition, to spike based motor control models. A two wheel mobile robot powered by DC motors can be autonomously controlled to follow a line drown in the floor. This spike system has been developed around the well-known Address-Event-Representation mechanism to communicate the different neuro-inspired layers of the system. RTC lab has developed all the components presented in this work, from the vision sensor, to the robot platform and the FPGA based platforms for AER processing.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2006-11730-C03-02Junta de Andalucía P06-TIC-0141