Pattern Recognition for Industrial Monitoring and Security using the Fuzzy Sugeno Integral and Modular Neural Networks

We describe in this paper the evolution of modular neural networks using hierarchical genetic algorithms for pattern recognition. Modular neural networks (MNN) have shown significant learning improvement over single neural networks (NN). For this reason, the use of MNN for pattern recognition is well justified. However, network topology design of MNN is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than for classical NNs. We describe in this paper the use of a hierarchical genetic algorithm (HGA) for optimizing the topology of each of the neural network modules of the MNN. The HGA is clearly needed due to the fact that topology optimization requires that we are able to manage both the layer and node information for each of the MNN modules. Simulation results prove the feasibility and advantages of the proposed approach.