Exploring Deep Spiking Neural Networks for Automated Driving Applications

Neural networks have become the standard model for various computer vision tasks in automated driving including semantic segmentation, moving object detection, depth estimation, visual odometry, etc. The main flavors of neural networks which are used commonly are convolutional (CNN) and recurrent (RNN). In spite of rapid progress in embedded processors, power consumption and cost is still a bottleneck. Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are gradually progressing to achieve low-power event-driven hardware architecture which has a potential for high efficiency. In this paper, we explore the role of deep spiking neural networks (SNN) for automated driving applications. We provide an overview of progress on SNN and argue how it can be a good fit for automated driving applications.