The role of lateral inhibition in the sensory processing in a simulated spiking neural controller for a robot

Abstract

Visual adaptation is the process that allows animals to be able to see over a wide range of light levels. This is achieved partially by lateral inhibition in the retina which compensates for low/high light levels. Neural controllers which cause robots to turn away from or towards light tend to work in a limited range of light conditions. In real environments, the light conditions can vary greatly reducing the effectiveness of the robot. Our solution for a simple Braitenberg vehicle is to add a single inhibitory neuron which laterally inhibits the output to the robot motors. This solution has additionally reduced the computational complexity of our simple neuron allowing for a greater number of neurons to be simulated with a fixed set of resources.