A Photoelectric Spiking Neuron for Visual Depth Perception

TLDR

The biological visual system encodes optical information into spikes, enabling high‑throughput, ultralow‑energy perception, and this has inspired devices that aim to mimic such neural processing, though precise replication remains challenging. This work presents a highly bio‑realistic photoelectric spiking neuron designed for visual depth perception. The neuron uses TaOX memristive spiking encoders that generate biologically similar 1–200 Hz spikes at sub‑micro‑watt power, integrated with a photodetector and a neuromorphic transistor network for information collection and recognition. The device mimics distance‑dependent responses and eye fatigue, and simulation shows improved depth‑perception recognition across varying distances, indicating potential for power‑efficient bioinspired or robotic systems.

Abstract

The biological visual system encodes optical information into spikes and processes them by the neural network, which enables the perception with high throughput of visual processing with ultralow energy budget. This has inspired a wide spectrum of devices to imitate such neural process, while precise mimicking such procedure is still highly required. Here, a highly bio-realistic photoelectric spiking neuron for visual depth perception is presented. The firing spikes generated by the TaOX memristive spiking encoders have a biologically similar frequency range of 1-200 Hz and sub-micro watts power. Such spiking encoder is integrated with a photodetector and a network of neuromorphic transistors, for information collection and recognition tasks, respectively. The distance-dependent response and eye fatigue of biological visual systems have been mimicked based on such photoelectric spiking neuron. The simulated depth perception shows a recognition improvement by adapting to sights at different distances. The results can advance the technologies in bioinspired or robotic systems that may be endowed with depth perception and power efficiency at the same time.