An artificial sensory neuron with visual-haptic fusion

• Main Authors: Wan, Changjin, Cai, Pingqiang, Guo, Xintong, Wang, Ming, Matsuhisa, Naoji, Yang, Le, Lv, Zhisheng, Luo, Yifei, Loh, Xian Jun, Chen, Xiaodong
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials; Nanosensors; Sensors and Biosensors
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/148445
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Human behaviors are extremely sophisticated, relying on the adaptive, plastic and event-driven network of sensory neurons. Such neuronal system analyzes multiple sensory cues efficiently to establish accurate depiction of the environment. Here, we develop a bimodal artificial sensory neuron to implement the sensory fusion processes. Such a bimodal artificial sensory neuron collects optic and pressure information from the photodetector and pressure sensors respectively, transmits the bimodal information through an ionic cable, and integrates them into post-synaptic currents by a synaptic transistor. The sensory neuron can be excited in multiple levels by synchronizing the two sensory cues, which enables the manipulating of skeletal myotubes and a robotic hand. Furthermore, enhanced recognition capability achieved on fused visual/haptic cues is confirmed by simulation of a multi-transparency pattern recognition task. Our biomimetic design has the potential to advance technologies in cyborg and neuromorphic systems by endowing them with supramodal perceptual capabilities.