Synthetic (robotic) vision
The SYCLOP perceiver
Our lab-developed robotic perceiver, the SYCLOP, is composed of an event-based camera (sensitive to luminance transitions in each pixel) that is installed on a mount with horizontal and vertical rotating motors, all integrated within a programmable closed loop system.
The SYCLOP is designed to employ active sensing – its camera’s sensors are silent when both the camera and the environment are static.
Our synthetic experiments are designed to test:
- what can and what cannot work in a simple active perceiver
- how can feasible perceptual schemes be physically implemented.
The closed loop architecture is flexible; we are currently evolving this system in an inside-out manner, by adding novel loops that address novel challenges. The lowest-order loops of SYCLOP are designed to ‘perceive’ basic local visual features such as the contrast, orientation and curvature of an edge, as well as motion. A CLP model of contrast has already been implemented in such a loop; a basic level of motion perception, smooth pursuit, emerged in this this loop without any explicit design.
Next, we will implement object and motion perception.
Relevant papers
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(2016). Perception as a closed-loop convergence process. eLife. 5.