Implementing artificial neural networks through bionic construction

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 22;14(2):e0212368. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212368. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

It is evident through biology research that, biological neural network could be implemented through two means: by congenital heredity, or by posteriority learning. However, traditionally, artificial neural network, especially the Deep learning Neural Networks (DNNs) are implemented only through exhaustive training and learning. Fixed structure is built, and then parameters are trained through huge amount of data. In this way, there are a lot of redundancies in the implemented artificial neural network. This redundancy not only requires more effort to train the network, but also costs more computing resources when used. In this paper, we proposed a bionic way to implement artificial neural network through construction rather than training and learning. The hierarchy of the neural network is designed according to analysis of the required functionality, and then module design is carried out to form each hierarchy. We choose the Drosophila's visual neural network as a test case to verify our method's validation. The results show that the bionic artificial neural network built through our method could work as a bionic compound eye, which can achieve the detection of the object and their movement, and the results are better on some properties, compared with the Drosophila's biological compound eyes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Artificial Intelligence*
  • Bionics*
  • Color
  • Drosophila melanogaster / physiology*
  • Machine Learning
  • Movement
  • Nerve Net / physiology*
  • Neural Networks, Computer*
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated
  • Visual Pathways / physiology*
  • Visual Perception / physiology*

Grants and funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 91846303 (for Xu Yang), the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 61502032 (for Xu Yang), the Core Electronic Devices, High-End General Purpose Processor, and Fundamental System Software of China under Grant No. 2012ZX01034-001-002 (for Hu He), Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNList) (for Hu He), and Samsung Tsinghua Joint Laboratory (for Hu He). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.