Bio-inspired neural network with application to license plate recognition: hysteretic ELM approach
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a bio-inspired neural network for improvement of information processing capability of the existing artificial neural networks.
Design/methodology/approach
In the network, the authors introduce a property often found in biological neural system – hysteresis – as the neuron activation function and a bionic algorithm – extreme learning machine (ELM) – as the learning scheme. The authors give the gradient descent procedure to optimize parameters of the hysteretic function and develop an algorithm to online select ELM parameters, including number of the hidden-layer nodes and hidden-layer parameters. The algorithm combines the idea of the cross validation and random assignment in original ELM. Finally, the authors demonstrate the advantages of the hysteretic ELM neural network by applying it to automatic license plate recognition.
Findings
Experiments on automatic license plate recognition show that the bio-inspired learning system has better classification accuracy and generalization capability with consideration to efficiency.
Originality/value
Comparing with the conventional sigmoid function, hysteresis as the activation function enables has two advantages: the neuron’s output not only depends on its input but also on derivative information, which provides the neuron with memory; the hysteretic function can switch between the two segments, thus avoiding the neuron falling into local minima and having a quicker learning rate. The improved ELM algorithm in some extent makes up for declining performance because of original ELM’s complete randomness with the cost of a litter slower than before.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61104113 and Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai under Grant 14ZR1400700.
Citation
Chen, L., Cui, L., Huang, R. and Ren, Z. (2016), "Bio-inspired neural network with application to license plate recognition: hysteretic ELM approach", Assembly Automation, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 172-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-11-2015-105
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited