2020/10/05 by Canaday, Daniel, Pomerance, Andrew, Gauthier, Daniel J · 2 citations
#FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.02285
We propose and demonstrate a nonlinear control method that can be applied to unknown, complex systems where the controller is based on a type of artificial neural network known as a reservoir computer. In contrast to many modern neural-network-based control techniques, which are robust to system uncertainties but require a model nonetheless, our technique requires no prior knowledge of the system and is thus model-free. Further, our approach does not require an initial system identification step, resulting in a relatively simple and efficient learning process. Reservoir computers are well-suited to the control problem because they require small training data sets and remarkably low training times. By iteratively training and adding layers of reservoir computers to the controller, a precise and efficient control law is identified quickly. With examples on both numerical and high-speed experimental systems, we demonstrate that our approach is capable of controlling highly complex dynamical systems that display deterministic chaos to nontrivial target trajectories.