The perceptron model is a linear machine learning algorithm used for binary classification tasks. It consists of input nodes, weights, a bias, and an activation function. In the forward stage, activation functions propagate input through the network to the output layer. In the backward stage, weights and biases are modified based on the error between actual and predicted outputs. The perceptron function calculates the output by multiplying inputs by learned weights and adding the bias. It classifies inputs based on whether the weighted sum is above or below zero. The perceptron can only learn linearly separable patterns and its output is limited to binary values.