A growing body of work underlines striking similarities between biological neural networks and recurrent, binary neural networks. A relatively smaller body of work, however, addresses the similarities between learning dynamics employed in deep artificial neural networks and synaptic plasticity in spiking neural networks. The challenge preventing this is largely caused by the discrepancy between the dynamical properties of synaptic plasticity and the requirements for gradient backpropagation. Learning algorithms that approximate gradient backpropagation using local error functions can overcome this challenge. Here, we introduce Deep Continuous Local Learning (DECOLLE), a spiking neural network equipped with local error functions for online learning with no memory overhead for computing gradients. DECOLLE is capable of learning deep spatio temporal representations from spikes relying solely on local information, making it compatible with neurobiology and neuromorphic hardware. Synaptic plasticity rules are derived systematically from user-defined cost functions and neural dynamics by leveraging existing autodifferentiation methods of machine learning frameworks. We benchmark our approach on the event-based neuromorphic dataset N-MNIST and DvsGesture, on which DECOLLE performs comparably to the state-of-the-art. DECOLLE networks provide continuously learning machines that are relevant to biology and supportive of event-based, low-power computer vision architectures matching the accuracies of conventional computers on tasks where temporal precision and speed are essential.

Combined efforts in the fields of neuroscience, computer science, and biology allowed to design biologically realistic models of the brain based on spiking neural networks. For a proper validation of these models, an embodiment in a dynamic and rich sensory environment, where the model is exposed to a realistic sensory-motor task, is needed. Due to the complexity of these brain models that, at the current stage, cannot deal with real-time constraints, it is not possible to embed them into a real-world task. Rather, the embodiment has to be simulated as well. While adequate tools exist to simulate either complex neural networks or robots and their environments, there is so far no tool that allows to easily establish a communication between brain and body models. The Neurorobotics Platform is a new web-based environment that aims to fill this gap by offering scientists and technology developers a software infrastructure allowing them to connect brain models to detailed simulations of robot bodies and environments and to use the resulting neurorobotic systems for in silico experimentation. In order to simplify the workflow and reduce the level of the required programming skills, the platform provides editors for the specification of experimental sequences and conditions, environments, robots, and brain–body connectors. In addition to that, a variety of existing robots and environments are provided. This work presents the architecture of the first release of the Neurorobotics Platform developed in subproject 10 “Neurorobotics” of the Human Brain Project (HBP).1 At the current state, the Neurorobotics Platform allows researchers to design and run basic experiments in neurorobotics using simulated robots and simulated environments linked to simplified versions of brain models. We illustrate the capabilities of the platform with three example experiments: a Braitenberg task implemented on a mobile robot, a sensory-motor learning task based on a robotic controller, and a visual tracking embedding a retina model on the iCub humanoid robot. These use-cases allow to assess the applicability of the Neurorobotics Platform for robotic tasks as well as in neuroscientific experiments.

State of the art approaches for visual-inertial sensor fusion use filter-based or optimizationbased algorithms. Due to the nonlinearity of the system, a poor initialization can have a dramatic impact on the performance of these estimation methods. Recently, a closed-form solution providing such an initialization was derived in [1]. That solution determines the velocity (angular and linear) of a monocular camera in metric units by only using inertial measurements and image features acquired in a short time interval. In this letter, we study the impact of noisy sensors on the performance of this closed-form solution. We show that the gyroscope bias, not accounted for in [1], significantly affects the performance of the method. Therefore, we introduce a new method to automatically estimate this bias. Compared to the original method, the new approach now models the gyroscope bias and is robust to it. The performance of the proposed approach is successfully demonstrated on real data from a quadrotor MAV. Abstract-State of the art approaches for visual-inertial sensor fusion use filter-based or optimization-based algorithms. Due to the nonlinearity of the system, a poor initialization can have a dramatic impact on the performance of these estimation methods. Recently, a closed-form solution providing such an initialization was derived in [1]. That solution determines the velocity (angular and linear) of a monocular camera in metric units by only using inertial measurements and image features acquired in a short time interval. In this paper, we study the impact of noisy sensors on the performance of this closed-form solution. We show that the gyroscope bias, not accounted for in [1], significantly affects the performance of the method. Therefore, we introduce a new method to automatically estimate this bias. Compared to the original method, the new approach now models the gyroscope bias and is robust to it. The performance of the proposed approach is successfully demonstrated on real data from a quadrotor MAV.

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Any visual sensor, whether artificial or biological, maps the 3D-world on a 2D-representation. The missing dimension is depth and most species use stereo vision to recover it. Stereo vision implies multiple perspectives and matching, hence it obtains depth from a pair of images. Algorithms for stereo vision are also used prosperously in robotics. Although, biological systems seem to compute disparities effortless, artificial methods suffer from high energy demands and latency. The crucial part is the correspondence problem; finding the matching points of two images. The development of event-based cameras, inspired by the retina, enables the exploitation of an additional physical constraint—time. Due to their asynchronous course of operation, considering the precise occurrence of spikes, Spiking Neural Networks take advantage of this constraint. In this work, we investigate sensors and algorithms for event-based stereo vision leading to more biologically plausible robots. Hereby, we focus mainly on binocular stereo vision.