An implementation of the path integrator mechanism of head direction cells for bio-mimetic navigation

Head direction cells are thought to be an integral part of the neural navigation system. These cells track the agent´s current head direction irrespective of the host´s location. In doing so, they process a combination of inputs: angular velocity and visual inputs are major effectors; to correctly encode the agent´s current heading. There are close to fifteen models of head direction cell systems found in literature today. Very few of these models have been implemented for bio-mimetic navigation in robots. In this paper, we describe an implementation of the head direction cell system on the robot operating system (ROS) robotic platform as a first step towards a bio-mimetic navigation system for Willow Garage´s personal robot 2 (PR2) robot.