skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Velocity-Controlled Oscillators for Hippocampal Navigation on Spiking Neuromorphic Hardware
Grid, place, and border cells in the mammalian hippocampus and entorhinal cortex perform highly sophisticated navigational tasks with an extremely low power budget. While previous algorithms for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in robotics have used these cells for inspiration, they have sacrificed the robust, low-power gains achieved with bioplausible models for ease of implementation. This paper presents steps towards robotic navigation with biologically realistic hippocampal models by implementing velocity-controlled oscillators, a basis for any spatially-tuned neuron, on mixed-mode neuromorphic spiking hardware.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1824198
PAR ID:
10108153
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2019 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 5
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract Low‐intensity high‐temperature (LIHT) solar cells are needed for extended photovoltaic power generation in both the lower atmosphere as well as at the surface of Venus. Double‐junction GaInP/GaAs solar cells that may be able to operate and survive, with suitable encapsulation, for several weeks on the 465°C Venus surface have been developed. These solar cells have been optimized for operation under the Venus solar spectrum, which is different from that of the Earth. 
    more » « less
  2. Wearable devices with sensing, processing and communication capabilities have become feasible with the advances in internet-of-things (IoT) and low power design technologies. Energy harvesting is extremely important for wearable IoT devices due to size and weight limitations of batteries. One of the most widely used energy harvesting sources is photovoltaic cell (PV-cell) owing to its simplicity and high output power. In particular, flexible PV-cells offer great potential for wearable applications. This paper models, for the first time, how bending a PV-cell significantly impacts the harvested energy. Furthermore, we derive an analytical model to quantify the harvested energy as a function of the radius of curvature. We validate the proposed model empirically using a commercial PV-cell under a wide range of bending scenarios, light intensities and elevation angles. Finally, we show that the proposed model can accelerate maximum power point tracking algorithms and increase the harvested energy by up to 25.0%. 
    more » « less
  3. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are mostly small and operate wirelessly on limited battery supply, and therefore have stringent constraints on power consumption and hardware resources. Therefore, energy-efficient (low energy) design is paramount for the successful deployment of resource constrained IoT devices. Further, Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) have evolved as a popular hardware security primitive for low cost, mass produced IoT devices with very constrained resources. Energy harvesting technologies utilizing solar cells are being used in ultra-low power IoT devices to satisfy the energy requirement. In this paper, we utilize the intrinsic variations in solar cells to design a novel solar cell based PUF. As a proof of concept, we have used the Tiva TM4C123GH6PM microcontroller to build our solar cell based PUF. From our experiments, we found that the proposed solar cell based PUF has the uniformity value of 49.21% which is close to the ideal value of 50%. Further, the proposed solar cell based PUF has worst case reliabilities of 92.97% and 90.62% with variations in temperature and light intensity, respectively. 
    more » « less
  4. The emergence of the Internet of Things and pervasive sensor networks have generated a surge of research in energy scavenging techniques. We know well that harvesting RF, solar, or kinetic energy enables the creation of battery-free devices that can be used where frequent battery changes or dedicated power lines are impractical. One unusual yet ubiquitous source of power is soil (earth itself) - or more accurately, bacterial communities in soil. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are electrochemical cells that harness the activities of microbes that naturally occur in soil, wetlands, and wastewater. MFCs have been a topic of research in environmental engineering and microbiology for decades, but are a relatively new topic in electronics design and research. Most low-power electronics have traditionally opted for batteries, RF energy, or solar cells. This is changing, however, as the limitations and costs of these energy sources hamper our ability to deploy useful systems that last for decades in challenging environments. If large-scale, long-term applications like underground infrastructure monitoring, smart farming, and sensing for conservation are to be possible, we must rethink the energy source. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Optical tweezers have profound importance across fields ranging from manufacturing to biotechnology. However, the requirement of refractive index contrast and high laser power results in potential photon and thermal damage to the trapped objects, such as nanoparticles and biological cells. Optothermal tweezers have been developed to trap particles and biological cells via opto-thermophoresis with much lower laser powers. However, the intense laser heating and stringent requirement of the solution environment prevent their use for general biological applications. Here, we propose hypothermal opto-thermophoretic tweezers (HOTTs) to achieve low-power trapping of diverse colloids and biological cells in their native fluids. HOTTs exploit an environmental cooling strategy to simultaneously enhance the thermophoretic trapping force at sub-ambient temperatures and suppress the thermal damage to target objects. We further apply HOTTs to demonstrate the three-dimensional manipulation of functional plasmonic vesicles for controlled cargo delivery. With their noninvasiveness and versatile capabilities, HOTTs present a promising tool for fundamental studies and practical applications in materials science and biotechnology. 
    more » « less