The spinal sensorimotor system (SSMS) is an appealing homologue for our identified application area of the design of PCNNs for handling large amounts of incoming sensory data and responding to this data in real time with a large number of responding outputs. The biological SSMS has all three of these elements in spades, and has an obvious lead-in to the bipedal locomotion application. While I do not propose that we try to duplicate or biomimic a system as complex as the SSMS, I do propose that a bipedal system modeled somewhat along the lines of the biological example makes an appealing research pathway. The bipedal locomotion system we investigate would be “biomimetic” in the general sense of that word, rather than “biomimic” in the narrow sense of my use of that term. The purpose of this tech brief is to acquaint everyone with the general schema and structure of the SSMS. Part I is the general overview. Part II deals with more of the specifics of the neural network organization of the system. Think of Part I as a sort of “systems level over-view” of the topic. In it I will try to identify some key issues for EC-based network design.
