Reproducing Fear Conditioning of Rats with Unmanned Ground Vehicles and Neuromorphic Systems

Deep learning accomplishes remarkable success through training with massively labeled datasets. However, the high demands on the datasets impede the feasibility of deep learning in edge computing scenarios and suffer the data scarcity issue. Rather than relying on labeled data, animals learn by interacting with their surroundings and memorizing the relationship between concurrent events. This learning paradigm is referred to as associative memory. The successful implementation of associative memory potentially achieves self-learning schemes analogous to animals to resolve the challenges of deep learning. The state-of-the-art implementations of associative memory are limited to small-scale and offline paradigms. Thus, in this work, we implement associative memory learning with an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and neuromorphic chips (Intel Loihi) for an online learning scenario. Our system reproduces the classic associative memory in rats. In specific, our system successfully reproduces the fear conditioning with no pretraining procedure and labeled datasets. In our experiments, the UGV serves as a substitute for the rats. Our UGV autonomously memorizes the cause-and-effect of the light stimulus and vibration stimulus, then exhibits a movement response. During associative memory learning, the synaptic weights are updated by Hebbian learning. The Intel Loihi chip is integrated with our online learning system for processing visual signals. Its average power usages for computing logic and memory are 30 mW and 29 mW, respectively.