Skip to main content

Efficient Coding in the Whisker System: Biomimetic Pre-processing for Robots?

  • Conference paper
Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems (Living Machines 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8064))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

Introduction. The Efficient coding hypothesis [1, 2] proposes that biological sensory processing has evolved to maximize the information transmitted to the brain from the environment, and should therefore be tuned to the statistics of the world. Metabolic and wiring considerations impose additional sparsity on these representations, such that the activity of individual neurons are as decorrelated as possible [3]. Efficient coding has provided a framework for understanding early sensory processing in both vision and audition, for example in explaining the receptive field properties of simple and complex cells in primary visual cortex (V1) and the tuning properties of auditory nerve fibres [4].

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Barlow, H.B.: Possible principles underlying the transformation of sensory messages. Sensory Communication, 217–234 (1961)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Atick, J.J.: Could information theory provide an ecological theory of sensory processing? Network: Computation in Neural Systems 3(2), 213–251 (1992)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Simoncelli, E.P.: Vision and the statistics of the visual environment. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 13(2), 144–149 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Olshausen, B.A., Field, D.J., et al.: Sparse coding of sensory inputs. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 14(4), 481–487 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Diamond, M., von Heimendahl, M., Knutsen, P., Kleinfeld, D., Ahissar, E.: ’Where’ and ’What’ in the whisker sensorimotor system. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 9(8) (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Prescott, T., Pearson, M., Mitchinson, B., Sullivan, J., Pipe, A.: Whisking with robots from rat vibrissae to biomimetic technology for active touch. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine 16(3), 42–50 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. O’Connor, D.H., Huber, D., Svoboda, K.: Reverse engineering the mouse brain. Nature 461(7266), 923–929 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Lepora, N., Pearson, M.J., Sullivan, J.C., Prescott, T.J.: The effect of whisker movement on radial distance estimation: a case study in comparative robotics. Frontiers in Neurorobotics 6(12) (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Fox, C.W., Evans, M.H., Pearson, M.J., Prescott, T.J.: Towards hierarchical blackboard mapping on a whiskered robot. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 60(11), 1356–1366 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Evans, M.H., Pearson, M.J., Lepora, N.F., Prescott, T.J., Fox, C.W.: Whiskered texture classification with uncertain contact pose geometry. In: 2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), pp. 7–13 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., Prescott, T.J.: Spectral template based classification of robotic whisker sensor signals in a floor texture discrimination task. In: Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS), pp. 19–24 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., Lepora, N.F., Prescott, T.J.: Whisker-object contact speed affects radial distance estimation. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), pp. 720–725 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Fox, C.W., Evans, M.H., Lepora, N.F., Pearson, M., Ham, A., Prescott, T.J.: CrunchBot: A mobile whiskered robot platform. In: Groß, R., Alboul, L., Melhuish, C., Witkowski, M., Prescott, T.J., Penders, J. (eds.) TAROS 2011. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 6856, pp. 102–113. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  14. Sullivan, J.C., Mitchinson, B., Pearson, M.J., Evans, M.H., Lepora, N.F., Fox, C.W., Melhuish, C., Prescott, T.J.: Tactile discrimination using active whisker sensors. IEEE Sensors Journal 12(2), 350–362 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Szwed, M., Bagdasarian, K., Ahissar, E.: Encoding of vibrissal active touch. Neuron 40(3), 621–630 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Lottem, E., Azouz, R.: A unifying framework underlying mechanotransduction in the somatosensory system. The Journal of Neuroscience 31(23), 8520–8532 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Lee, H., Battle, A., Raina, R., Ng, A.Y.: Efficient sparse coding algorithms. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, vol. 19, p. 801 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Petersen, R., Brambilla, M., Bale, M., Alenda, A., Panzeri, S., Montemurro, M., Maravall, M.: Diverse and temporally precise kinetic feature selectivity in the VPm thalamic nucleus. Neuron 60(5), 890–903 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Mitchinson, B., Gurney, K.N., Redgrave, P., Melhuish, C., Pipe, A.G., Pearson, M., Gilhespy, I., Prescott, T.J.: Empirically inspired simulated electro-mechanical model of the rat mystacial follicle-sinus complex. Proc. Biol. Sci. 271(1556), 2509–2516 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Evans, M.H. (2013). Efficient Coding in the Whisker System: Biomimetic Pre-processing for Robots?. In: Lepora, N.F., Mura, A., Krapp, H.G., Verschure, P.F.M.J., Prescott, T.J. (eds) Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8064. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39802-5_36

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39802-5_36

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39801-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39802-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics