VLSI sensori-motor systems

The authors describe their efforts in developing sensorimotor chips which contain arrays of sensing elements, circuitry for processing the raw sensor data into forms relevant to motion-related tasks, circuitry for generating motion signals based on the processed sensor data and the goals of the system, and an operating system which selects a unique motor command from a set of usually conflicting motion signals. Sensors of this kind are intended for use in robots. They would greatly reduce the computational burden from that imposed with standard sensing techniques that use high bandwidth video cameras or even tactile sensing arrays, since they would generate motor signals directly rather than sensor signals from which another computer would have to generate motor signals