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At least 37 records · Page 2

Linear and nonlinear ARMA model parameter estimation using an artificial neural network

This paper addresses parametric system identification of linear and nonlinear dynamic systems by analysis of the input and output signals. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between estimation of the system using a feedforward neural network model and estimation of the system by use of linear and nonlinear autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) models. By utilizing a neural network model incorporating a polynomial activation function, we show the equivalence of the artificial neural network to the linear and nonlinear ARMA models. We compare the parameterization of the estimated system using the neural network and ARMA approaches by utilizing data generated by means of computer simulations. Specifically, we show that the parameters of a simulated ARMA system can be obtained from the neural network analysis of the simulated data or by conventional least squares ARMA analysis. The feasibility of applying neural networks with polynomial activation functions to the analysis of experimental data is explored by application to measurements of heart rate (HR) and instantaneous lung volume (ILV) fluctuations.

NASA Discipline Regulatory Physiology↗

Hidden Markov models and neural networks for fault detection in dynamic systems

Neural networks plus hidden Markov models (HMM) can provide excellent detection and false alarm rate performance in fault detection applications, as shown in this viewgraph presentation. Modified models allow for novelty detection. Key contributions of neural network models are: (1) excellent nonparametric discrimination capability; (2) a good estimator of posterior state probabilities, even in high dimensions, and thus can be embedded within overall probabilistic model (HMM); and (3) simple to implement compared to other nonparametric models. Neural network/HMM monitoring model is currently being integrated with the new Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna controller software and will be on-line monitoring a new DSN 34-m antenna (DSS-24) by July, 1994.

Smyth, Padhraic↗

Hideen Markov Models and Neural Networks for Fault Detection in Dynamic Systems

None given. (From conclusion): Neural networks plus Hidden Markov Models(HMM)can provide excellene detection and false alarm rate performance in fault detection applications. Modified models allow for novelty detection. Also covers some key contributions of neural network model, and application status.

space network↗

NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research: South Carolina

The use of an appropriate relationship model is critical for reliable prediction of future urban growth. Identification of proper variables and mathematic functions and determination of the weights or coefficients are the key tasks for building such a model. Although the conventional logistic regression model is appropriate for handing land use problems, it appears insufficient to address the issue of interdependency of the predictor variables. This study used an alternative approach to simulation and modeling urban growth using artificial neural networks. It developed an operational neural network model trained using a robust backpropagation method. The model was applied in the Myrtle Beach region of South Carolina, and tested with both global datasets and areal datasets to examine the strength of both regional models and areal models. The results indicate that the neural network model not only has many theoretic advantages over other conventional mathematic models in representing the complex urban systems, but also is practically superior to the logistic model in its capability to predict urban growth with better - accuracy and less variation. The neural network model is particularly effective in terms of successfully identifying urban patterns in the rural areas where the logistic model often falls short. It was also found from the area-based tests that there are significant intra-regional differentiations in urban growth with different rules and rates. This suggests that the global modeling approach, or one model for the entire region, may not be adequate for simulation of a urban growth at the regional scale. Future research should develop methods for identification and subdivision of these areas and use a set of area-based models to address the issues of multi-centered, intra- regionally differentiated urban growth.

Sutton, Michael A.↗

Statistical methods and neural network approaches for classification of data from multiple sources

Statistical methods for classification of data from multiple data sources are investigated and compared to neural network models. A problem with using conventional multivariate statistical approaches for classification of data of multiple types is in general that a multivariate distribution cannot be assumed for the classes in the data sources. Another common problem with statistical classification methods is that the data sources are not equally reliable. This means that the data sources need to be weighted according to their reliability but most statistical classification methods do not have a mechanism for this. This research focuses on statistical methods which can overcome these problems: a method of statistical multisource analysis and consensus theory. Reliability measures for weighting the data sources in these methods are suggested and investigated. Secondly, this research focuses on neural network models. The neural networks are distribution free since no prior knowledge of the statistical distribution of the data is needed. This is an obvious advantage over most statistical classification methods. The neural networks also automatically take care of the problem involving how much weight each data source should have. On the other hand, their training process is iterative and can take a very long time. Methods to speed up the training procedure are introduced and investigated. Experimental results of classification using both neural network models and statistical methods are given, and the approaches are compared based on these results.

Benediktsson, Jon Atli↗

UAV Trajectory Modeling Using Neural Networks

Large amount of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAVs) are projected to operate in the near future. Potential sUAV applications include, but not limited to, search and rescue, inspection and surveillance, aerial photography and video, precision agriculture, and parcel delivery. sUAVs are expected to operate in the uncontrolled Class G airspace, which is at or below 500 feet above ground level (AGL), where many static and dynamic constraints exist, such as ground properties and terrains, restricted areas, various winds, manned helicopters, and conflict avoidance among sUAVs. How to enable safe, efficient, and massive sUAV operations at the low altitude airspace remains a great challenge. NASA's Unmanned aircraft system Traffic Management (UTM) research initiative works on establishing infrastructure and developing policies, requirement, and rules to enable safe and efficient sUAVs' operations. To achieve this goal, it is important to gain insights of future UTM traffic operations through simulations, where the accurate trajectory model plays an extremely important role. On the other hand, like what happens in current aviation development, trajectory modeling should also serve as the foundation for any advanced concepts and tools in UTM. Accurate models of sUAV dynamics and control systems are very important considering the requirement of the meter level precision in UTM operations. The vehicle dynamics are relatively easy to derive and model, however, vehicle control systems remain unknown as they are usually kept by manufactures as a part of intellectual properties. That brings challenges to trajectory modeling for sUAVs. How to model the vehicle's trajectories with unknown control system? This work proposes to use a neural network to model a vehicle's trajectory. The neural network is first trained to learn the vehicle's responses at numerous conditions. Once being fully trained, given current vehicle states, winds, and desired future trajectory, the neural network should be able to predict the vehicle's future states at next time step. A complete 4-D trajectory are then generated step by step using the trained neural network. Experiments in this work show that the neural network can approximate the sUAV's model and predict the trajectory accurately.

Neural Networks↗

Model Of Neural Network With Creative Dynamics

Paper presents analysis of mathematical model of one-neuron/one-synapse neural network featuring coupled activation and learning dynamics and parametrical periodic excitation. Demonstrates self-programming, partly random behavior of suitable designed neural network; believed to be related to spontaneity and creativity of biological neural networks.

Zak, Michail↗

Neural networks and MIMD-multiprocessors

Two artificial neural network models are compared. They are the Hopfield Neural Network Model and the Sparse Distributed Memory model. Distributed algorithms for both of them are designed and implemented. The run time characteristics of the algorithms are analyzed theoretically and tested in practice. The storage capacities of the networks are compared. Implementations are done using a distributed multiprocessor system.

Vanhala, Jukka↗

Neural Network Machine Learning and Dimension Reduction for Data Visualization

Neural network machine learning in computer science is a continuously developing field of study. Although neural network models have been developed which can accurately predict a numeric value or nominal classification, a general purpose method for constructing neural network architecture has yet to be developed. Computer scientists are often forced to rely on a trial-and-error process of developing and improving accurate neural network models. In many cases, models are constructed from a large number of input parameters. Understanding which input parameters have the greatest impact on the prediction of the model is often difficult to surmise, especially when the number of input variables is very high. This challenge is often labeled the "curse of dimensionality" in scientific fields. However, techniques exist for reducing the dimensionality of problems to just two dimensions. Once a problem's dimensions have been mapped to two dimensions, it can be easily plotted and understood by humans. The ability to visualize a multi-dimensional dataset can provide a means of identifying which input variables have the highest effect on determining a nominal or numeric output. Identifying these variables can provide a better means of training neural network models; models can be more easily and quickly trained using only input variables which appear to affect the outcome variable. The purpose of this project is to explore varying means of training neural networks and to utilize dimensional reduction for visualizing and understanding complex datasets.

Liles, Charles A.↗

A Natural Language Understanding Approach for Digitizing Aircraft Ground Taxi Instructions

Advancements in natural language processing (NLP) technologies offer a unique opportunity to furnish aircraft crews, primarily pilots, with digital instructions for taxiing operations. Digital taxi instructions, delivered either as text or graphics, can streamline taxiing procedures, thereby reducing radio congestion, minimizing communication errors, and enhancing aircraft monitoring. Techniques used for natural language understanding (NLU), a subset of NLP focused on machine comprehension of natural language, can extract taxi instructions directly from verbal radio communications. This capability paves the way for implementing a digital taxi communication framework with minimal adjustments to the existing air traffic controller operations. This paper delves into a novel application of NLU: the automated generation of digital taxi instructions from air traffic controller speech. We detail the development of an annotation scheme to represent aircraft ground traffic communications within the US National Airspace System (NAS), employing intent classification (IC) and slot filling (SF) to extract taxi instructions using NLU models. Several neural network models were trained on a dataset annotated with our scheme, achieving notable accuracy and F1 scores. Our research demonstrates the feasibility of using NLU to automatically generate digital taxi instructions, showcasing its potential to streamline the implementation of digital taxi communications.

LSTM↗

A Natural Language Understanding Approach for Digitizing Aircraft Ground Taxi Instructions

Advancements in natural language processing (NLP) technologies offer a unique opportunity to furnish aircraft crews, primarily pilots, with digital instructions for taxiing operations. Digital taxi instructions, delivered either as text or graphics, can streamline taxiing procedures, thereby reducing radio congestion, minimizing communication errors, and enhancing aircraft monitoring. Techniques used for natural language understanding (NLU), a subset of NLP focused on machine comprehension of natural language, can extract taxi instructions directly from verbal radio communications. This capability paves the way for implementing a digital taxi communication framework with minimal adjustments to the existing air traffic controller operations. This paper delves into a novel application of NLU: the automated generation of digital taxi instructions from air traffic controller speech. We detail the development of an annotation scheme to represent aircraft ground traffic communications within the US National Airspace System (NAS), employing intent classification (IC) and slot filling (SF) to extract taxi instructions using NLU models. Several neural network models were trained on a dataset annotated with our scheme, achieving notable accuracy and 𝐹1 scores. Our research demonstrates the feasibility of using NLU to automatically generate digital taxi instructions, showcasing its potential to streamline the implementation of digital taxi communications.

ATC↗

Understanding and Verifying Neural Networks

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have gained immense popularity in recent times and have widespread use in applications such as image classification, sentiment analysis, speech recognition and also in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving. However, they suffer limitations such as lack of explainability and robustness which raise safety and security concerns in their usage. Further, the complex structure and large input spaces of DNNs act as an impediment to thorough verification and testing. The SafeDNN project at the Robust Software Engineering (RSE) group at NASA aims at exploring techniques to ensure that systems that use deep neural networks are safe, robust and interpretable. In this talk, I will be presenting our technique Prophecy that automatically infers formal properties of deep neural network models. The tool extracts patterns based on neuron activations as preconditions that imply certain desirable output properties of the model. I would be highlighting case studies that use Prophecy in obtaining explanations for network decisions, understanding correct and incorrect behavior, providing formal guarantees wrt safety and robustness, and debugging neural network models. We have applied the tool on image classification networks, neural network controllers providing turn advisories in unmanned aircrafts, regression models used for autonomous center-line tracking in aircrafts and neural network object detectors

Deep Neural Networks↗

UAV Trajectory Modeling Using Neural Networks

Massive small unmanned aerial vehicles are envisioned to operate in the near future. While there are lots of research problems need to be addressed before dense operations can happen, trajectory modeling remains as one of the keys to understand and develop policies, regulations, and requirements for safe and efficient unmanned aerial vehicle operations. The fidelity requirement of a small unmanned vehicle trajectory model is high because these vehicles are sensitive to winds due to their small size and low operational altitude. Both vehicle control systems and dynamic models are needed for trajectory modeling, which makes the modeling a great challenge, especially considering the fact that manufactures are not willing to share their control systems. This work proposed to use a neural network approach for modelling small unmanned vehicle's trajectory without knowing its control system and bypassing exhaustive efforts for aerodynamic parameter identification. As a proof of concept, instead of collecting data from flight tests, this work used the trajectory data generated by a mathematical vehicle model for training and testing the neural network. The results showed great promise because the trained neural network can predict 4D trajectories accurately, and prediction errors were less than 2:0 meters in both temporal and spatial dimensions.

Neural Networks↗

Toward Transition Modeling in a Hypersonic Boundary Layer at Flight Conditions

An accurate physics-based transition prediction method integrated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers is pursued for hypersonic boundary layer flows over slender hypersonic vehicles at flight conditions. The geometry and flow conditions are selected to match relevant trajectory locations from the ascent phase of the HIFiRE-1 flight experiment, namely, a 7-degree half-angle cone with 2.5 mm nose radius, freestream Mach numbers in the range of 3.8 – 5.5 and freestream unit Reynolds numbers in the range of 3.3 × 10(exp 6) – 21.4 × 10(exp 6) m(exp -1). Earlier research had shown that the onset of transition during the HIFiRE-1 flight experiment correlated with an amplification factor of N ≈ 13.5 for the planar Mack modes. However, to incorporate the N-factor correlations into a CFD code, we investigate surrogate models for disturbance amplification that avoid the direct computation of stability characteristics. A commonly used approach for low-speed flows is based on an a priori database of stability characteristics for locally similar profiles. However, the results presented in this paper demonstrate that the application of this approach to hypersonic boundary layers over blunt spherical nose-tip cones leads to large, unacceptable errors in the predictions of amplification factors, mainly due to its failure in accounting for the effects of the entropy layer on the boundary-layer profiles along the length of the model. We propose and demonstrate an alternate approach that employs the stability computations for a canonical set of blunt cone configurations to train a physics-informed convolutional neural network model that is shown to provide substantially improved transition predictions for hypersonic flow configurations with entropy-layer effects. Furthermore, the excellent performance of the neural network model is also confirmed for cone configurations with nose radius and half-angle values that do not correspond to those used to build the database. Finally, the convolutional neural network model is shown to outperform the linear stability calculations for underresolved basic states.

Pedro Paredes↗

Model-Trained Neural Networks and Electronic Holography Demonstrated to Detect Damage in Blades

Detect Damage in Blades Electronic holography can show damaged regions in fan blades at 30 frames/sec. The electronic holograms are transformed by finite-element-model-trained artificial neural networks to visualize the damage. The trained neural networks are linked with video and graphics to visualize the bending-induced strain distribution, which is very sensitive to damage. By contrast, it is very difficult to detect damage by viewing the raw, speckled, characteristic fringe patterns. For neural-network visualization of damage, 2 frames or 2 fields are used, rather than the 12 frames normally used to compute the displacement distribution from electronic holograms. At the NASA Lewis Research Center, finite element models are used to compute displacement and strain distributions for the vibration modes of undamaged and cracked blades. A model of electronic time-averaged holography is used to transform the displacement distributions into finite-element-resolution characteristic fringe patterns. Then, a feedforward neural network is trained with the fringe-pattern/strain-pattern pairs, and the neural network, electronic holography, and video are implemented on a workstation. Now that the neural networks have been tested successfully at 30 frames/sec on undamaged and cracked cantilevers, the electronic holography and neural-network processing are being adapted for onsite damage inspection of twisted fan blades and rotormounted blades. Our conclusion is that model-trained neural nets are effective when they are trained with good models whose application is well understood. This work supports the aeromechanical testing portion of the Advanced Subsonic Technology Project.

Decker, Arthur J.↗

A Feasibility Study of Synthesizing Subsurfaces Modeled with Computational Neural Networks

This paper investigates the feasibility of synthesizing substructures modeled with computational neural networks. Substructures are modeled individually with computational neural networks and the response of the assembled structure is predicted by synthesizing the neural networks. A superposition approach is applied to synthesize models for statically determinate substructures while an interface displacement collocation approach is used to synthesize statically indeterminate substructure models. Beam and plate substructures along with components of a complicated Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) model are used in this feasibility study. In this paper, the limitations and difficulties of synthesizing substructures modeled with neural networks are also discussed.

Wang, John T.↗

Biological neural networks as model systems for designing future parallel processing computers

One of the more interesting debates of the present day centers on whether human intelligence can be simulated by computer. The author works under the premise that neurons individually are not smart at all. Rather, they are physical units which are impinged upon continuously by other matter that influences the direction of voltage shifts across the units membranes. It is only the action of a great many neurons, billions in the case of the human nervous system, that intelligent behavior emerges. What is required to understand even the simplest neural system is painstaking analysis, bit by bit, of the architecture and the physiological functioning of its various parts. The biological neural network studied, the vestibular utricular and saccular maculas of the inner ear, are among the most simple of the mammalian neural networks to understand and model. While there is still a long way to go to understand even this most simple neural network in sufficient detail for extrapolation to computers and robots, a start was made. Moreover, the insights obtained and the technologies developed help advance the understanding of the more complex neural networks that underlie human intelligence.

Ross, Muriel D.↗