STDP with adaptive synaptic delay for robot navigation control

In this work a biologically-inspired network of spiking neurons is used for robot navigation control. The two tasks taken into account are obstacle avoidance and landmark-based navigation. The system learns the correlation among unconditioned stimuli (pre-wired sensors) and conditioned stimuli (high level sensors) through Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP). In order to improve the robot behaviours not only the synaptic weight but also the synaptic delay is subject to learning. Modulating the synaptic delay the robot is able to store the landmark position, like in a short time memory, and to use this information to smooth the turning actions prolonging the landmark effects also when it is no more visible. Simulations are carried out in a dynamic simulation environment and the robotic system considered is a cockroach-inspired hexapod robot. The locomotion signals are generated by a Central Pattern Generator and the spiking network is devoted to control the heading of the robot acting on the amplitude of the leg steps. Several scenarios have been proposed, for instance a T-shaped labyrinth, used in laboratory experiments with mice to demonstrate classical and operant conditioning, has been considered. Finally the proposed adaptive navigation control structure can be extended in a modular way to include other features detected by new sensors included in the correlation-based learning process.