Neuromorphic Systems

Overview

This research area focused on sub-systems that emulate neural processing in biological systems, such as vision, sound, speech, touch, and chemical sensing.

Pioneers

The Neuromorphic approach was pioneered by Carver Mead and John Hopfield at Caltech, leading to the formation of the Computation and Neural Systems (CNS) degree program and the NSF Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering (CNSE).

Projects

• Caltech Electronic Nose: A project that combined sensing, processing, and actuation on an integrated CMOS/MEMS system chip.
• Caltech Silicon Active Skin: Combined sensing, processing, and actuation on an integrated CMOS/MEMS system chip.

Achievements

Development of VLSI systems for:

• On-chip Neural Network Learning
• High-capacity Neural Associative Memories
• Real-time vector quantization on images
• Video Contrast Enhancement
• Color Constancy
• Stereopsis