Alessio Franci awarded a WEL-T starting Grant for his research into neuromorphic engineering
Alessio Franci, a professor at the Montefiore Institute in ULiège's Faculty of Applied Sciences, has been awarded a WEL-T Starting Grant for his project entitled "Embodied Excitability: a design principle for adaptive neuromorphic agents", which aims to develop intelligent energy-saving sensors and actuators for autonomous vehicles.
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intelligent machines" are irreplaceable tools in our society. But the Von Neumann digital architecture that underpins our computers and telephones makes them extremely energy-intensive. These structures are also rigidly optimised and fragile to disturbance, making them difficult to reuse. "If we want artificial intelligence to be more sustainable, we need to rethink how we design it. Biology can be a source of inspiration, showing us many examples of intelligence based on adaptability and energy efficiency rather than performance," explains Alessio Franci, engineer, professor and researcher at ULiège's new Neuromorphic Engineering Laboratory (Montefiore Institute / School of Engineering).
Biological intelligence is analogical (it does not have a 'clock'), embodied (it exists, has evolved and developed in an organism with a body and a purpose in the world) and dynamic (it changes continuously over time). One principle at the source of biological intelligence is excitability, the dynamic phenomenon at the root of the brain's electrical functioning. Neuromorphic engineering (NE) aims to use dynamics and excitability to design analogue chips that break away from the Von Neumann digital architecture, which could be the key to greater adaptability and energy efficiency. But beyond a few successes, such as event cameras, IN is still far from reaching its full potential. Scientists believe this is due to the lack of a theoretical framework for IN.
In the project that has just received WelT funding, Alessio Franci proposes to introduce the principle of Embodied Excitability as a synthesis of the defining properties of biological intelligence and to use it to develop a theoretical framework for the analysis and design of neuromorphic adaptive agents. "We design adaptive neuromorphic sensors and actuators with decision-making functions, such as those underlying biological attention, and couple them into embodied sensorimotor loops controlling autonomous agents."
These results could lead to intelligent, energy-saving sensors and actuators which, in the future, could be relevant to sustainable developments in the autonomous vehicle sector.
Read > The University of Liège sets up a neuromorphic engineering laboratory
About Wel Research Institute
The WEL Research Institute (WelRI) supports excellent strategic research within its departments, intending to develop breakthrough innovations that will impact health and sustainable transition.
WelT fellowships are funded by the Wel Research Institute (WELRI), set up by the Walloon Region in 2009 to support excellent strategic research in biotechnology life sciences. The Wel RI offers two types of funding: Welbio for life sciences and WEL-T for engineering sciences, chemistry and physics.
