NCS-FO: Foundations of Biologically Informed Intelligent Machines for Spatial Navigation

NCS-FO：空间导航生物信息智能机器的基础

• 批准号: 2024607
• 负责人: Aurel Lazar
• 金额: $ 100万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2024607&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NCS; FO; Foundations; Biologically; Informed

While mammals evolved some of the largest brains in the animal kingdom, fruit flies, despite their miniature brains, exhibit remarkably sophisticated capabilities. They can navigate and fly in most wind conditions, and maneuver directly towards or evasively away from stimuli while remembering their location, as well as rest or walk in any angular orientation even in the dark. The smaller brain of the navigationally agile fruit fly thus presents a good road map for studying the fundamental principles of spatio-temporal navigation. Recent studies have shown that a brain area called the central complex (CX) gives rise to the internal compass and spatial memory of the fruit fly. The CX also exhibits ``hardware'' simplicity, efficiency and robust operation matched by scalable integration of sensory information. The CX circuit architecture is a prime candidate for building biologically informed intelligent machines for spatial navigation. The overriding goal of this project is to create silicon hardware that can incorporate the essence of the spatial-navigation circuits of the CX into neuromorphic hardware. By interweaving the two research directions of computational neuroscience and computer engineering, the project has a strong potential to develop an intelligent machine prototype for spatial navigation meeting the most demanding requirements of autonomous vehicles.The goals of this project are three-fold: (1) distill the foundations underlying the navigation circuits in the CX, (2) expand upon its principles of computation and (3) provide an implementation of the resulting functionality in silicon. Achieving these goals calls for (i) developing a comprehensive, biologically informed circuit architecture for vision-based spatial navigation, (ii) investigating the circuit mechanisms that encode and store spatio-temporal information, and (iii) studying the roles that different types of visual information flows play in shaping the decision making circuits of the CX. Informed by this bio-architecture, the investigators will develop a silicon CX prototype that will substantially enhance programmability, size, power, and accuracy over conventional neuromorphic architectures.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

虽然哺乳动物进化出了动物王国中最大的大脑，但果蝇尽管大脑很小，却表现出了非常复杂的能力。它们可以在大多数风力条件下导航和飞行，在记忆位置的同时直接靠近或躲避刺激，甚至在黑暗中也能以任何角度休息或行走。因此，导航敏捷的果蝇的小大脑为研究时空导航的基本原理提供了一个很好的路线图。最近的研究表明，果蝇大脑中一个叫做中央复合体（CX）的区域产生了内部指南针和空间记忆。CX还展示了“硬件”的简单性、效率和强大的操作，与可扩展的感官信息集成相匹配。CX电路架构是构建具有生物信息的空间导航智能机器的主要候选。这个项目的首要目标是创造能够将CX的空间导航电路的本质整合到神经形态硬件中的硅硬件。通过将计算神经科学和计算机工程两个研究方向相互交织，该项目具有很强的潜力，可以开发出满足自动驾驶汽车最苛刻要求的空间导航智能机器原型。这个项目的目标有三个方面：(1)提炼出CX导航电路的基础，(2)扩展其计算原理，(3)在硅中提供最终功能的实现。实现这些目标需要：(1)为基于视觉的空间导航开发一个全面的、生物学知情的电路架构；(2)研究编码和存储时空信息的电路机制；(3)研究不同类型的视觉信息流在形成CX决策电路中所起的作用。根据这种生物结构，研究人员将开发一种硅CX原型，该原型将大大提高可编程性、尺寸、功率和精度，而不是传统的神经形态结构。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。