A spike-latency model for sonar-based navigation in obstacle fields

  • Authors:
  • Timothy K. Horiuchi

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Part I: Regular Papers
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The rapid control of sonar-guided vehicles through obstacle fields has been a goal of robotics for decades. How sensory data are represented strongly affects how obstacles and goal information can be combined to select a direction of travel. Many approaches combine attractive and repulsive effects to steer; we have implemented an algorithm that first evaluates the desirability of different directions followed by a winner-take-all (WTA) mechanism to guide steering. We describe a neuromorphic VLSI implementation of this algorithm using the inherent echo delay of obstacles to produce a range-dependent gain in a "race-to-first-spike" neural WTA circuit.