A Configurable Digital Neuromorphic Hardware Generator for Heterogeneous Computing

Recent trends in machine learning (ML) have placed a strong emphasis on power- and resource-efficient neural networks, as well as the development of neural networks on edge devices. Spiking neural net-works (SNNs), due to their event-based nature, are one of the most promising types of neural networks for low-power applications. To accelerate...

Evolving Spiking Neural Networks to Mimic PID Control: Applied to Autonomous Blimps

In recent years, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have become a standard in robotic control. However, a significant drawback of large-scale ANNs is their increased power consumption. This becomes a critical concern when designing autonomous aerial vehicles, given the stringent constraints on power and weight. Especially in the case of blimps,...

Energy-efficient Spike Encoding for ECG Arrhythmia Classification

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the top cause of death worldwide, and their diagnosis can be quickly and painlessly achieved through Electrocardiogram (ECG). The diagnosis of electrocardiogram has gradually evolved from manual diagnosis by doctors to one that can be realized using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Early AI still required manual...

On-chip Self Timed SNN Custom Digital Interconnect System

A Spiking neural network (SNN) is a type of artificial neural network which encodes information using spike timing, network structure, and synaptic weights to emulate the information processing function of the human brain. Within an SNN, it is always required to support the spike transmission that travels between neurons(array). This thesis aims...

SPAIC: A sub-μW/Channel, 16-Channel General-Purpose Event-Based Analog Front-End with Dual-Mode Encoders

Low-power event-based analog front-ends (AFE) are a crucial component required to build efficient end-to-end neuromorphic processing systems for edge computing. Although several neuromorphic chips have been developed for implementing spiking neural networks (SNNs) and solving a wide range of sensory processing tasks, there are only a few general...

Neuromorphic Control using Input-Weighted Threshold Adaptation

Neuromorphic processing promises high energy efficiency and rapid response rates, making it an ideal candidate for achieving autonomous flight of resource-constrained robots. It can be especially beneficial for complex neural networks as are used for high-level visual perception. However, fully neuromorphic solutions also need to tackle low...

Modeling of router structure for SNN-applicable NoC definitions

Spiking neural networks (SNN), as the third-generation artificial neural network, has a similar potential pulse triggering mechanism to the biological neuron. This mechanism enables the spiking neural network to increase computing power compared to the traditional artificial neural network to process complex information. However, a large number...

Evolving-to-Learn with Spiking Neural Networks

Inspired by the natural nervous system, synaptic plasticity rules are applied to train spiking neural networks. Different from learning algorithms such as propagation and evolution that are widely used to train spiking neural networks, synaptic plasticity rules learn the parameters with local information, making them suitable for online learning...

Design and implementation of a parsimonious neuromorphic PID for onboard altitude control for MAVs using neuromorphic processors

The great promises of neuromorphic sensing and processing for robotics have led researchers and engineers to investigate novel models for robust and reliable control of autonomous robots (navigation, obstacle detection and avoidance, etc.), especially for quadrotors in challenging contexts such as drone racing and aggressive maneuvers. Using...

Neuromorphic computing for attitude estimation onboard quadrotors

Compelling evidence has been given for the high energy efficiency and update rates of neuromorphic processors, with performance beyond what standard Von Neumann architectures can achieve. Such promising features could be advantageous in critical embedded systems, especially in robotics. To date, the constraints inherent in robots (e.g., size...

Cerebron: A Reconfigurable Architecture for Spatio-Temporal Sparse Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are promising alternatives to artificial neural networks (ANNs) since they are more realistic brain-inspired computing models. SNNs have sparse neuron firing over time, i.e., spatiotemporal sparsity; thus, they are helpful in enabling energy-efficient hardware inference. However, exploiting the spatiotemporal...

Population Step Forward Encoding Algorithm: Improving the signal encoding accuracy and efficiency of spike encoding algorithms

Conversion from digital information to spike trains is needed for Spiking Neural Networks. Moreover, it is one of the most important steps for Spiking Neural Networks. This conversion could lead to much information loss depending on which encoding algorithm is used. Another major problem that can occur in a specific use-case is the limited...

A robust modular spiking neural networks training methodology for time-series datasets: With a focus on gesture control

Neurons in Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) communicate through spikes, similarly that neurons in the brain communicate, thus mimicking the brain. The working of SNNs is temporally based, as the spikes are time-dependent. SNNs have the benefit to perform continual classification, and are inherently more low-power than other Artificial Neural...

Supervised Learning in Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking neural networks are notoriously hard to train because of their complex dynamics and sparse spiking signals. However, in part due to these properties, spiking neurons possess high computa- tional power and high theoretical energy efficiency. This thesis introduces an online, supervised, and gradient-based learning algorithm for spiking...

N-shot Training Methodology: For Spiking Neural Networks(SNNs)

Traditional Artificial Neural Networks(ANNs)like CNNs have shown tremendous opportunities in various domains like autonomous cars, disease diagnosis, etc. Proven learning algorithms like backpropagation help ANNs in achieving higher accuracy. But there is a serious challenge with the increasing popularity of traditional ANNs is of energy...