Yes, something like this. I happen to have one approach that I am working on that may work as a classifier (hex-grid coding) but there are certainly other ways that HTM cells can group together work as classifiers.
There is something at work to form the cluster of features that we can identify as a grid cell being active when certain inputs are present. I think that in time Numenta will show how the TBT builds up to doing this.
I think that the Calvin tiles method (hex-grid coding) shows great promise but until I get demo code running to show this in action it is just another pretty theory.
BTW: to clarify a relationship - (mini-columns made up of HTM cells) group together to form (Hex-grid coding) to interact with hex-grid codes in other maps to display the macro-property of (activation spot in Grid cell array)
Example below:
The black spots are mini-columns. The colored lines are competition wining lateral connections, the red in one map and the blue in another. The yellow spots are in a third map where the projections from the red and blue maps coincident hex-grid signalling interact to a form a spot that you call a grid module. I don’t expect the entire hex-grid arrays to be active at the same time.