How to configure the code of Spaun so that it can be used to do character recognition?

Examples & Tutorials
1

I’m trying to implement an extra functionality which seems like the recognizing digits task but recognizing characters(‘a’, ‘b’,‘c’, …) in Spaun. I have worked for weeks and I tune the code that can input my own ‘picture’ as input but it still output an estimated digit.

Next step, I prepare to change the semantic pointer which is loaded by Spaun(the ‘class_means.npz’ and ‘params.npz’).

So, what I want to know is that should I change the network structure of Spaun to implement my task? If not, what’s the meaning of the data in ‘class_means.npz’(I think it has some relation with the data in ‘params.npz’ but I can not find their relationship).

2

Spaun uses a Deep Learning network converted to spiking neurons to recognize the digits. When you say “tune the code” do you mean you’ve trained a new network and put it inside Spaun?

3

Thank you for your reply, Seanny.

Yesterday I saw an article that shows how to train a network which can be used by SNN(https://nengo.github.io/nengo_dl/examples/spiking_mnist.html).

Is this the way you trained the network?

I know little about this. When I saw the source code about Spaun, it loads many file, which terminate in ‘.npz’, I think this may be the structure of the network.

self.vision_network_filename = os.path.join(self.filepath, 'params.npz')
self.vision_network_data = np.load(self.vision_network_filename)
self.weights = self.vision_network_data['weights']
self.biases = self.vision_network_data['biases']
weights_class = self.vision_network_data['Wc']
biases_class = self.vision_network_data['bc']

I think the ‘weights’ and ‘bias’ in ‘params.npz’ is the parameters of the network, the ‘Wc’ is used to calculate the semantic pointer(I think), dose it has a relationship with the ‘weights’ and ‘bias’?

Besides, I don’t know the meaning of ‘class_means.npz’, could you please tell me how to get the params, thank you!

4

Yes, that link is an example of how to train a network using Deep Learning and I think it would be suitable for use with Spaun.

@xchoo do you have any documentation on the format of the files class_means.npz and params.npz, as well as how you generate them?