A Biologically Inspired FPGA Based Implementation of a Tactile Sensory System for Object Recognition and Texture Discrimination

Both a FPGA implementation of a rodent?s tactile sensory system and a neural FPGA based hardware processor, mimicking the brainstem behaviour are presented. They have principally been designed using biological considerations. The two systems are being ported on a single FPGA platform and will ultimately be embedded on a mobile robot, which will operate in real world environments for object recognition and surface textural discrimination purposes.