Current Projects
Recent advances in microscopic sensing, ULP processing and communications are leading to brain-machine interfaces that may be able to observe thousands if not millions of active neurons in vivo. These “nanomorphic” circuits truly push the limit of nanometer scale semiconductor devices. These developments undoubtedly will enhance the prospect for viable long-term brain-machine interfaces, in which sensor nodes directly observe and excite neural activity in the brain, and use this information to restore function for people with severe neural disabilities such as stroke, spinal cord injury, ALS, epilepsy, etc.
Our efforts include the development of the groundbreaking OMNI device and “neural dust”.
Neuro-inspired computing may be a perfect match to the properties of the emerging nano-scale devices (such as 3D integration, carbon and spin devices, non-volatile memory cells such as RRAM, etc): it thrives on randomness and variability, processing is performed in the continuous or discrete domains, and massive parallelism, major redundancy and adaptivity are of essence. Computational paradigms inspired by neural information processing hence may lead to energy-efficient, low-cost, dense and/or reliable implementations of the functions the brain excels at. In this research we will explore various means on how the interaction between neuroscience and information technology may lead to an exciting future.
Research Team
Graduate Students
George Alexandov, Human Intranet
Matthew Andersen, Human Intranet
Robin Bennarouch, Human Intranet
Sohum Dutta, Neuro-inspired computing
Ali Moin, Human Intranet
Nathan Narevsky, Distributed wireless
Miles Rusch, Neuro-inspired computing
Andy Zhou, Brain-Machine Interfaces and HI
Staff
Fred Brurghardt, Technical staff
Arno Thielens, Postdoc
Swarms and the Human Intranet
The emerging “sensory swarm” is creating a multi-faceted interface between the physical and biological world and the cyberspace, blurring the separation between the two and finally enabling concepts such as enhanced reality, unPads and true immersion. The functionality of the swarm arises from the spontaneous and opportunistic connections between large numbers of devices. Enabling this fascinating paradigm – which represents true wireless ubiquity – still requires major breakthroughs on a number of fronts. Most challenging is the creation of an environment where heterogeneous devices of various flavors (physical interfaces, computing, storage, networking) can connect seamlessly to each other, and dynamically adjust to changing conditions. Enabling this and opening the door for true economy of scale would be a horizontal mediation layer – the “SwarmOS”, which enables applications (“swarmlets”) to transparently claim resources whenever available, while ensuring performance guarantees. The existence of such an environment would truly help to create a “Swarm Maker Movement”, empowering virtually everyone to create and deploy novel swarm components.
