Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network

To derive meaningful navigation strategies, animals have to estimate their directional headings in the environment. Accordingly, this function is achieved by the head direction cells that were found in mammalian brains, whose neural activities encode one’s heading direction. It is believed that such...

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Main Authors: Zhenshan Bing, Dominik Nitschke, Genghang Zhuang, Kai Huang, Alois Knoll
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. 2023-02-01
Series:Journal of Automation and Intelligence
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949855423000035
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author Zhenshan Bing
Dominik Nitschke
Genghang Zhuang
Kai Huang
Alois Knoll
author_facet Zhenshan Bing
Dominik Nitschke
Genghang Zhuang
Kai Huang
Alois Knoll
author_sort Zhenshan Bing
collection DOAJ
description To derive meaningful navigation strategies, animals have to estimate their directional headings in the environment. Accordingly, this function is achieved by the head direction cells that were found in mammalian brains, whose neural activities encode one’s heading direction. It is believed that such head direction information is generated by integrating self-motion cues, which also introduces accumulative errors in the long term. To eliminate such errors, this paper presents an efficient calibration model that mimics the animals’ behavior by exploiting visual cues in a biologically plausible way, and then implements it in robotic navigation tasks. The proposed calibration model allows the agent to associate its head direction and the perceived egocentric direction of a visual cue with its position and orientation, and therefore to calibrate the head direction when the same cue is viewed again. We examine the proposed head direction calibration model in extensive simulations and real-world experiments and demonstrate its excellent performance in terms of quick association of information to proximal or distal cues as well as accuracy of calibrating the integration errors of the head direction. Videos can be viewed at https://videoviewsite.wixsite.com/hdc-calibration.
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publishDate 2023-02-01
publisher KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.
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spelling doaj-art-a34b623e04e54a89a9cfadbe724c0ff92025-08-20T02:51:38ZengKeAi Communications Co., Ltd.Journal of Automation and Intelligence2949-85542023-02-0121314110.1016/j.jai.2023.100020Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell networkZhenshan Bing0Dominik Nitschke1Genghang Zhuang2Kai Huang3Alois Knoll4Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, 85741, Germany; Corresponding author.Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, 85741, GermanyDepartment of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, 85741, GermanySchool of Data and Computer Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, ChinaDepartment of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, 85741, GermanyTo derive meaningful navigation strategies, animals have to estimate their directional headings in the environment. Accordingly, this function is achieved by the head direction cells that were found in mammalian brains, whose neural activities encode one’s heading direction. It is believed that such head direction information is generated by integrating self-motion cues, which also introduces accumulative errors in the long term. To eliminate such errors, this paper presents an efficient calibration model that mimics the animals’ behavior by exploiting visual cues in a biologically plausible way, and then implements it in robotic navigation tasks. The proposed calibration model allows the agent to associate its head direction and the perceived egocentric direction of a visual cue with its position and orientation, and therefore to calibrate the head direction when the same cue is viewed again. We examine the proposed head direction calibration model in extensive simulations and real-world experiments and demonstrate its excellent performance in terms of quick association of information to proximal or distal cues as well as accuracy of calibrating the integration errors of the head direction. Videos can be viewed at https://videoviewsite.wixsite.com/hdc-calibration.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949855423000035Head direction cellsError calibrationCognitive navigationNeural SLAM
spellingShingle Zhenshan Bing
Dominik Nitschke
Genghang Zhuang
Kai Huang
Alois Knoll
Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
Journal of Automation and Intelligence
Head direction cells
Error calibration
Cognitive navigation
Neural SLAM
title Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
title_full Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
title_fullStr Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
title_full_unstemmed Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
title_short Towards cognitive navigation: A biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
title_sort towards cognitive navigation a biologically inspired calibration mechanism for the head direction cell network
topic Head direction cells
Error calibration
Cognitive navigation
Neural SLAM
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949855423000035
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