A neuromorphic head direction cell system

The head direction (HD) cell system in the brain of mammals is thought to be part of the neural circuitry supporting their spatial navigation capabilities. In this paper we present a neuromorphic VLSI system that mimics the operation of the HD system. Relying on spiking neurons and attractor dynamics, this system can be used to represent and retain the current estimate of head orientation in the environment and integrate angular velocity to update this estimate. The presented system is a first step towards more general odometry systems that could be used for modeling biological navigation systems.