Inventi Impact: Robotics
publication date: 2012/10/15

AN APLYSIA-LIKE SPIKING NEURAL NETWORK IMPLEMENTATION OF SENSORY FUSION ON AN AUTONOMOUS ROBOT
                  Fady Alnajjar, Kazuyuki Murase

ABSTRACT
Abstract - We here introduce a novel biologically inspired adaptive controller for autonomous robot. The proposed controller binds N number of Aplysia-like spiking neural network each of which could interact with a particular sensory information and produce various motors output. The post-synaptic weights in each model are gradually updated by the property of spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) and that of the presynaptic modulation signal (synapse-on-synapse contact) from the sensory neurons. Information from different types of sensors is bound at the motor neurons. Experimental results show that a physical robot Khepera with the proposed controller quickly adapted into an open environment by evolving obstacle avoidance behavior while locating a target object using both its IR sensors and liner-camera. We believe that this novel approach could be an opportunity for new applications to autonomous robots with various sensory and motor moda

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