Brains and Machines

Brains and Machines

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Brains and Machines episodes

  • Tobi Delbrück Talks Caltech, Cameras, and Neural Control

    In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains talks to Dr. Tobi Delbrück, one of the original neuromorphic engineers from Carver Mead’s team at Caltech. Now a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich, he has spent his career developing neuromorphic cameras and other technology. In this interview, you’ll find out how he got started in the field, his work developing the dynamic vision sensor (also known as an event camera) and the pros and cons of sparse representations.

    45 min
  • Ferroelectric Memristors and Exotic Materials to Drive AI

    In this episode of Brains and Machines, Sunny Bains gets deep into nanoscale ferroelectrics with Professor Beatriz Noheda, director of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center (CogniGron). They discuss how this unusual interdisciplinary research center works, why nanoscale ferroelectrics may be useful in brain-like systems, and a little about how they are designed and fabricated.

    40 min
  • Perceiving Touch With Event-Based Neuromorphic Computing

    In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Italian Institute of Technology interviews her IIT colleague, Dr. Simeon Bamford, who is currently working on tactile neuromorphic sensors. They talk about creating circuits to perform functions lost to brain damage, Bamford’s involvement with the commercialization of dynamic vision sensors, and his latest research on robotic touch. Discussion follows with Dr. Sunny Bains of University College London, and Prof. Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University.

    43 min
  • How Memristors Will Help Machines Think at Different Timescales

    In the latest episode of Brains and Machines, EE Times regular Dr. Sunny Bains talks to Professor Melika Payvand, who designs neural systems from the circuit-level up at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. You’ll find out the role that memristors are playing in the systems she designs, why neural circuits need to operate at different timescales, and why copying some features of biological dendrites could add computational power to silicon brains. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

    49 min
  • ARM Inventor Steve Furber on SpiNNaker 1, 2 and Beyond

    In this latest episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Sunny Bains interviews now-Emeritus Professor Steve Furber as he prepares to leave the University of Manchester. They talk about associative memories, the original SpiNNaker neural simulator designed using densely-interconnected ARM cores, and the new generation of the technology currently being assembled. Discussion follows with Dr. Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

    43 min
  • How to See ‘Where’ Through Low-Power Event Cameras

    In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Dr. Giulia D’Angelo, from the Czech Technical University in Prague, talks to Professor Guillermo Gallego, from the Technical University of Berlin. They discuss the application of the new generation of bio-inspired, event-driven cameras and their algorithms to extract cues of motion, depth and optical flow estimation. After that, Giulia discusses the interview with Dr. Sunny Bains from the University College London and Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

    44 min
  • Seeing Robotics and Machine Vision as Dynamical Systems

    In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains talks to Dr Yulia Sandamirskaya, who has just created the Neuromorphic Computing Group at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. We discuss the role that dynamical systems theory plays in robotics, her work with Intel’s Loihi platform, and what she plans to do in her new position at ZHAW, particularly related to vision. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.


    47 min
  • Building Brain-Like Systems from Sub-Threshold Electronics

    In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, EE Times regular Sunny Bains talks to Professor Giacomo Indiveri, from the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. They talk about building biologically-plausible neural circuits in silicon, the trade-offs involved in using analog and digital circuits, and how the technology has been translated into startups. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

    43 min
  • Understanding Real Brains with Robotic Rats, and Vice Versa

    In this episode of the Brains and Machines podcast, Sunny Bains talks to Dr Mitra Hartmann, Professor of both Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University, and head of their sensory and neural engineering group. They discuss the ways in which modelling animal perceptual systems—in her case, the rat—can make us better at both understanding the brain and building technology. After that, Sunny discusses the interview with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

    38 min
  • On-Chip Learning is Missing Neuromorphic Building Block

    In this episode of Brains and Machines, Sunny Bains interviews Elisabetta Chicca, head of the bio-inspired Circuits and Systems research group at the University of Groningen, about building neural chips with memristors, adding electronic brains to neural robots, some of the current difficulties with learning algorithms for spiking systems and more. Discussion follows with Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University.

    42 min

About Brains and Machines

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Curious to explore the technology advancing Artificial Intelligence beyond the usual headlines? Brains and Machines will introduce you to the people and ideas behind…