COMPUTER SCIENCE – COMPUTER CHIP SCIENCE
again. This insect is really small, light and consumes a negligible amount of energy. Raik believes that being an intelligence insect could very easily be one of its applications. Nevertheless, this is a miniature robot that has the capacity to climb somewhere where there is very little room and where it cannot be contacted. The first objective is to create an operational prototype which shows that this miniature self-seeing and self-managing robot, which requires very little energy, is actually realistic. We cannot say that what Raik is doing in association with Aabloo is an entirely new approach. The uniqueness of the work done by Estonian researchers is embodied in programmability. The second innovative aspect is that the neural network they are building is mainly something that has not been done before. “On the analogue electronics side there are tricks, which we can use to make the neural network more compact and simpler; however, we lose the linear activation function as a result. However, a nonlinear system is great in some ways. Inaccuracy can even be a positive. It makes learning more efficient. This is an exciting novelty,” explains Raik. There are also smaller unique aspects that our researchers provide to the wider scientific community in the form of articles.
Putting theory into practice Raik’s second collaboration is with Professor Maarja Kruusmaa regarding underwater sensor networks. Raik has been involved in breakdowns and testing from an early age. He has involved himself with this subject for 28 years, but mainly theoretically. Studying underwater sensor networks provided an opportunity to apply this knowledge in real life. This is an environment in which there are a lot of breakdowns and where reliability is a major concern, according to him. You can read more about this project on pages 48–52; however, Jaan Raik explains that underwater breakdowns may be extremely severe and it is very difficult to receive a clear signal and a concrete result from there. In collaboration with the Centre for
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Estonian Centre of Excellence in ICT Research
