10 research outputs found
Agile Reactive Navigation for A Non-Holonomic Mobile Robot Using A Pixel Processor Array
This paper presents an agile reactive navigation strategy for driving a
non-holonomic ground vehicle around a preset course of gates in a cluttered
environment using a low-cost processor array sensor. This enables machine
vision tasks to be performed directly upon the sensor's image plane, rather
than using a separate general-purpose computer. We demonstrate a small ground
vehicle running through or avoiding multiple gates at high speed using minimal
computational resources. To achieve this, target tracking algorithms are
developed for the Pixel Processing Array and captured images are then processed
directly on the vision sensor acquiring target information for controlling the
ground vehicle. The algorithm can run at up to 2000 fps outdoors and 200fps at
indoor illumination levels. Conducting image processing at the sensor level
avoids the bottleneck of image transfer encountered in conventional sensors.
The real-time performance of on-board image processing and robustness is
validated through experiments. Experimental results demonstrate that the
algorithm's ability to enable a ground vehicle to navigate at an average speed
of 2.20 m/s for passing through multiple gates and 3.88 m/s for a 'slalom' task
in an environment featuring significant visual clutter.Comment: 7 page
Cellular Automata Applications in Shortest Path Problem
Cellular Automata (CAs) are computational models that can capture the
essential features of systems in which global behavior emerges from the
collective effect of simple components, which interact locally. During the last
decades, CAs have been extensively used for mimicking several natural processes
and systems to find fine solutions in many complex hard to solve computer
science and engineering problems. Among them, the shortest path problem is one
of the most pronounced and highly studied problems that scientists have been
trying to tackle by using a plethora of methodologies and even unconventional
approaches. The proposed solutions are mainly justified by their ability to
provide a correct solution in a better time complexity than the renowned
Dijkstra's algorithm. Although there is a wide variety regarding the
algorithmic complexity of the algorithms suggested, spanning from simplistic
graph traversal algorithms to complex nature inspired and bio-mimicking
algorithms, in this chapter we focus on the successful application of CAs to
shortest path problem as found in various diverse disciplines like computer
science, swarm robotics, computer networks, decision science and biomimicking
of biological organisms' behaviour. In particular, an introduction on the first
CA-based algorithm tackling the shortest path problem is provided in detail.
After the short presentation of shortest path algorithms arriving from the
relaxization of the CAs principles, the application of the CA-based shortest
path definition on the coordinated motion of swarm robotics is also introduced.
Moreover, the CA based application of shortest path finding in computer
networks is presented in brief. Finally, a CA that models exactly the behavior
of a biological organism, namely the Physarum's behavior, finding the
minimum-length path between two points in a labyrinth is given.Comment: To appear in the book: Adamatzky, A (Ed.) Shortest path solvers. From
software to wetware. Springer, 201
Neurorobotics—A Thriving Community and a Promising Pathway Toward Intelligent Cognitive Robots
Neurorobots are robots whose control has been modeled after some aspect of the brain. Since the brain is so closely coupled to the body and situated in the environment, Neurorobots can be a powerful tool for studying neural function in a holistic fashion. It may also be a means to develop autonomous systems that have some level of biological intelligence. The present article provides my perspective on this field, points out some of the landmark events, and discusses its future potential
Exploring Adversarial Attack in Spiking Neural Networks with Spike-Compatible Gradient
Recently, backpropagation through time inspired learning algorithms are
widely introduced into SNNs to improve the performance, which brings the
possibility to attack the models accurately given Spatio-temporal gradient
maps. We propose two approaches to address the challenges of gradient input
incompatibility and gradient vanishing. Specifically, we design a gradient to
spike converter to convert continuous gradients to ternary ones compatible with
spike inputs. Then, we design a gradient trigger to construct ternary gradients
that can randomly flip the spike inputs with a controllable turnover rate, when
meeting all zero gradients. Putting these methods together, we build an
adversarial attack methodology for SNNs trained by supervised algorithms.
Moreover, we analyze the influence of the training loss function and the firing
threshold of the penultimate layer, which indicates a "trap" region under the
cross-entropy loss that can be escaped by threshold tuning. Extensive
experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of our solution.
Besides the quantitative analysis of the influence factors, we evidence that
SNNs are more robust against adversarial attack than ANNs. This work can help
reveal what happens in SNN attack and might stimulate more research on the
security of SNN models and neuromorphic devices
A Survey of Robotics Control Based on Learning-Inspired Spiking Neural Networks
Biological intelligence processes information using impulses or spikes, which makes those living creatures able to perceive and act in the real world exceptionally well and outperform state-of-the-art robots in almost every aspect of life. To make up the deficit, emerging hardware technologies and software knowledge in the fields of neuroscience, electronics, and computer science have made it possible to design biologically realistic robots controlled by spiking neural networks (SNNs), inspired by the mechanism of brains. However, a comprehensive review on controlling robots based on SNNs is still missing. In this paper, we survey the developments of the past decade in the field of spiking neural networks for control tasks, with particular focus on the fast emerging robotics-related applications. We first highlight the primary impetuses of SNN-based robotics tasks in terms of speed, energy efficiency, and computation capabilities. We then classify those SNN-based robotic applications according to different learning rules and explicate those learning rules with their corresponding robotic applications. We also briefly present some existing platforms that offer an interaction between SNNs and robotics simulations for exploration and exploitation. Finally, we conclude our survey with a forecast of future challenges and some associated potential research topics in terms of controlling robots based on SNNs
CIRCUITS AND ARCHITECTURE FOR BIO-INSPIRED AI ACCELERATORS
Technological advances in microelectronics envisioned through Moore’s law have led to powerful processors that can handle complex and computationally intensive tasks. Nonetheless, these advancements through technology scaling have come at an unfavorable cost of significantly larger power consumption, which has posed challenges for data processing centers and computers at scale. Moreover, with the emergence of mobile computing platforms constrained by power and bandwidth for distributed computing, the necessity for more energy-efficient scalable local processing has become more significant. Unconventional Compute-in-Memory architectures such as the analog winner-takes-all associative-memory and the Charge-Injection Device processor have been proposed as alternatives.
Unconventional charge-based computation has been employed for neural network accelerators in the past, where impressive energy efficiency per operation has been attained in 1-bit vector-vector multiplications, and in recent work, multi-bit vector-vector multiplications. In the latter, computation was carried out by counting quanta of charge at the thermal noise limit, using packets of about 1000 electrons. These systems are neither analog nor digital in the traditional sense but employ mixed-signal circuits to count the packets of charge and hence we call them Quasi-Digital. By amortizing the energy costs of the mixed-signal encoding/decoding over compute-vectors with many elements, high energy efficiencies can be achieved.
In this dissertation, I present a design framework for AI accelerators using scalable compute-in-memory architectures. On the device level, two primitive elements are designed and characterized as target computational technologies: (i) a multilevel non-volatile cell and (ii) a pseudo Dynamic Random-Access Memory (pseudo-DRAM) bit-cell. At the level of circuit description, compute-in-memory crossbars and mixed-signal circuits were designed, allowing seamless connectivity to digital controllers. At the level of data representation, both binary and stochastic-unary coding are used to compute Vector-Vector Multiplications (VMMs) at the array level. Finally, on the architectural level, two AI accelerator for data-center processing and edge computing are discussed. Both designs are scalable multi-core Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), where vector-processor arrays are tiled on a 2-layer Network-on-Chip (NoC), enabling neighbor communication and flexible compute vs. memory trade-off. General purpose Arm/RISCV co-processors provide adequate bootstrapping and system-housekeeping and a high-speed interface fabric facilitates Input/Output to main memory