Insect-Brain inspired Neuromorphic Nanophotonics

The goal of the project is to develop nanophotonic on-chip devices for integrated sensing and neural computation, inspired by the insect brain. This will uniquely combine four lines of research:

1. Progress in understanding insect neurobiology that provides proven circuit designs to solve significant problems such as autonomous navigation;
2. Advanced III-V semiconductor nanowire technology that exploits light to obtain a large number of interconnects with extremely low power consumption;
3. Optically efficient stable molecular dyes that can be used for novel memory components;
4. Circuit technology developed for quantum computing.

As proof of concept, we target the complete pathway from polarised light sensing in the insect eye to the internal compass and memory circuits by which this information is integrated in a continuous accurate estimate of location.