Paper, Technology Based on Rodent Neurons

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a quintessential problem in autonomous navigation, augmented reality, and virtual reality. In particular, low-power SLAM has gained increasing importance for its applications in power-limited edge devices such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and small-sized cars that constitute devices with edge intelligence. This article presents a 7.25-to-8.79-TOPS/W mixed-signal oscillator-based SLAM accelerator for applications in edge robotics. This study proposes a neuromorphic SLAM IC, called NeuroSLAM, employing oscillator-based pose-cells and a digital head direction cell to mimic place cells and head direction cells that have been discovered in a rodent brain. The oscillatory network emulates a spiking neural network and its continuous attractor property achieves spatial cognition with a sparse energy distribution, similar to the brains of rodents. Furthermore, a lightweight vision system with a max-pooling is implemented to support low-power visual odometry and re-localization. The test chip fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS exhibits a peak energy efficiency of 8.79 TOPS/W with a power consumption of 23.82 mW.

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