Zespol: A Lightweight Environment for Training Swarming Agents

Agent-based modeling (ABM) and simulation have emerged as important tools for studying emergent behaviors, especially in the context of swarming algorithms for robotic systems. Despite significant research in this area, there is a lack of standardized simulation environments, which hinders the development and deployment of real-world robotic swarms. To address this issue, we present Zespol, a modular, Python-based simulation environment that enables the development and testing of multi-agent control algorithms. Zespol provides a flexible and extensible sandbox for initial research, with the potential for scaling to real-world applications. We provide a topological overview of the system and detailed descriptions of its plug-and-play elements. We demonstrate the fidelity of Zespol in simulated and real-word robotics by replicating existing works highlighting the simulation to real gap with the milling behavior. We plan to leverage Zespol's plug-and-play feature for neuromorphic computing in swarming scenarios, which involves using the modules in Zespol to simulate the behavior of neurons and their connections as synapses. This will enable optimizing and studying the emergent behavior of swarm systems in complex environments. Our goal is to gain a better understanding of the interplay between environmental factors and neural-like computations in swarming systems.

Neuromorphic Bayesian Optimization in Lava

The ever-increasing demands of computationally expensive and high-dimensional problems require novel optimization methods to find near-optimal solutions in a reasonable amount of time. Bayesian Optimization (BO) stands as one of the best methodologies for learning the underlying relationships within multi-variate problems. This allows users to optimize time consuming and computationally expensive black-box functions in feasible time frames. Existing BO implementations use traditional von-Neumann architectures, in which data and memory are separate. In this work, we introduce Lava Bayesian Optimization (LavaBO) as a contribution to the open-source Lava Software Framework. LavaBO is the first step towards developing a BO system compatible with heterogeneous, fine-grained parallel, in-memory neuromorphic computing architectures (e.g., Intel's Loihi platform). We evaluate the algorithmic performance of the LavaBO system on multiple problems such as training state-of-the-art spiking neural network through back-propagation and evolutionary learning. Compared to traditional algorithms (such as grid and random search), we highlight the ability of LavaBO to explore the parameter search space with fewer expensive function evaluations, while discovering the optimal solutions.

Object Motion Sensitivity: A Bio-inspired Solution to the Ego-motion Problem for Event-based Cameras

Neuromorphic (event-based) image sensors draw inspiration from the human-retina to create an electronic device that can process visual stimuli in a way that closely resembles its biological counterpart. These sensors process information significantly different than the traditional RGB sensors. Specifically, the sensory information generated by event-based image sensors are orders of magnitude sparser compared to that of RGB sensors. The first generation of neuromorphic image sensors, Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS), are inspired by the computations confined to the photoreceptors and the first retinal synapse. In this work, we highlight the capability of the second generation of neuromorphic image sensors, Integrated Retinal Functionality in CMOS Image Sensors (IRIS), which aims to mimic full retinal computations from photoreceptors to output of the retina (retinal ganglion cells) for targeted feature-extraction. The feature of choice in this work is Object Motion Sensitivity (OMS) that is processed locally in the IRIS sensor. We study the capability of OMS in solving the ego-motion problem of the event-based cameras. Our results show that OMS can accomplish standard computer vision tasks with similar efficiency to conventional RGB and DVS solutions but offers drastic bandwidth reduction. This cuts the wireless and computing power budgets and opens up vast opportunities in high-speed, robust, energy-efficient, and low-bandwidth real-time decision making.