Noah J. Cowan

Maral Mordad, Kian Behzad, Debojyoti Biswas et al.

Biological sensory systems are inherently adaptive, filtering out constant stimuli and prioritizing relative changes, likely enhancing computational and metabolic efficiency. Inspired by active sensing behaviors across a wide range of animals, this paper presents a novel event-based visual servoing framework for ground robots. Utilizing a Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS), we demonstrate that by applying a fixed spatial kernel to the asynchronous event stream generated from structured logarithmic intensity-change patterns, the resulting net event flux analytically isolates specific kinematic states. We establish a generalized theoretical bound for this event rate estimator and show that linear and quadratic spatial profiles isolate the robot's velocity and position-velocity product, respectively. Leveraging these properties, we employ a multi-pattern stimulus to directly synthesize a nonlinear state-feedback term entirely without traditional state estimation. To overcome the inescapable loss of linear observability at equilibrium inherent in event sensing, we propose a bio-inspired active sensing limit-cycle controller. Experimental validation on a 1/10-scale autonomous ground vehicle confirms the efficacy, extreme low-latency, and computational efficiency of the proposed direct-sensing approach.

Andrew Lamperski, Debojyoti Biswas, Eric S. Fortune et al.

Active sensing is traditionally defined as the expenditure of energy, typically in the form of movement, for obtaining information. Here, we propose that the combination of reliance on adaptive sensors, the linkage between movement and sensing, and task-level control inevitably gives rise to the emergence of active sensing movements. In this way, active sensing is not driven by sensory goals, such as minimizing uncertainty about the state, but rather is necessary for task-level control. This hypothesis, that active sensing subserves control, is supported by both empirical data from organisms and mathematical theory. Interestingly, active sensing behaviors often occur in discrete epochs, interspersed with goal-oriented behavior. This suggests that animals switch between two behavioral modes with distinct control policies, an `explore' mode in which animals produce dynamic movements to shape sensory feedback, and an `exploit' mode in which animals produce slower compensatory movements that are directly related to achieving task goals. This strategy for feedback control that relies on adaptive sensors, active sensing, and mode switching is not commonly used in engineered systems despite being ubiquitous in biology. Engineered systems comprising state-of-the-art sensors, actuators, and mechanical designs can outperform animals with respect to ``cost functions'' such as maximum force generation, precision, and speed. Nevertheless, animals routinely achieve robust, graceful behaviors that are currently unmatched by engineered systems, suggesting that current control systems are insufficient. These insights, expressed in the language of control theory, may be critical for improving robotic sensing and control.

Ashwin De Silva, Rahul Ramesh, Lyle Ungar et al.

Learning is a process which can update decision rules, based on past experience, such that future performance improves. Traditionally, machine learning is often evaluated under the assumption that the future will be identical to the past in distribution or change adversarially. But these assumptions can be either too optimistic or pessimistic for many problems in the real world. Real world scenarios evolve over multiple spatiotemporal scales with partially predictable dynamics. Here we reformulate the learning problem to one that centers around this idea of dynamic futures that are partially learnable. We conjecture that certain sequences of tasks are not retrospectively learnable (in which the data distribution is fixed), but are prospectively learnable (in which distributions may be dynamic), suggesting that prospective learning is more difficult in kind than retrospective learning. We argue that prospective learning more accurately characterizes many real world problems that (1) currently stymie existing artificial intelligence solutions and/or (2) lack adequate explanations for how natural intelligences solve them. Thus, studying prospective learning will lead to deeper insights and solutions to currently vexing challenges in both natural and artificial intelligences.

İsmail Uyanık, Mustafa Mert Ankaralı, Noah J. Cowan et al.

There are limitations on the extent to which manually constructed mathematical models can capture relevant aspects of legged locomotion. Even simple models for basic behaviors such as running involve non-integrable dynamics, requiring the use of possibly inaccurate approximations in the design of model-based controllers. In this study, we show how data-driven frequency domain system identification methods can be used to obtain input--output characteristics for a class of dynamical systems around their limit cycles, with hybrid structural properties similar to those observed in legged locomotion systems. Under certain assumptions, we can approximate hybrid dynamics of such systems around their limit cycle as a piecewise smooth linear time periodic system (LTP), further approximated as a time-periodic, piecewise LTI system to reduce parametric degrees of freedom in the identification process. In this paper, we use a simple one-dimensional hybrid model in which a limit-cycle is induced through the actions of a linear actuator to illustrate the details of our method. We first derive theoretical harmonic transfer functions of our example model. We then excite the model with small chirp signals to introduce perturbations around its limit-cycle and present systematic identification results to estimate the harmonic transfer functions for this model. Comparison between the data-driven HTF model and its theoretical prediction illustrates the potential effectiveness of such empirical identification methods in legged locomotion.