polynomial nets

[Chuck Anderson]

    A good source for descriptions of methods and applications of
GMDH is the book: "Self-Organizing Methods in Modeling: GMDH Type
Algorithms", edited by Stanley J. Farlow, published by Marcel Dekker,
Inc., NY, 1984.

    Barron Associates, Inc., of Stanardsville, Virginia, have been
investigating a number of variations of GMDH for some time.  I have
seen publications by Roger Barron and John Elder from there.  In
"Automated Design of Continuously-Adaptive Control..." by Elder and
Barron, in the proceedings of the 1988 American Control Conference, a
polynomial net is used to form a map from aircraft sensors to control
actions.  The sensors indicate errors between actual and desired
response of the aircraft.  The net learns actions that compensate for
damaged control surfaces on the aircraft.  Good actions were
determined by an off-line optimization using an aircraft simulation.
The net was used to interpolate between these optimized values.

    Another Barron, Andrew, at the Univ. of Ill., is contributing to
this work by exploring the links between polynomial nets and more
standard statistical methods. See

Andrew Barron and Roger Barron, "Statistical Learning Networks: A
Unifying View", Proc. of the 1988 Symposium on the Interface:
Statistics and Computing Science, Reston, VA, April 21-23.

And, at the upcoming NIPS conferece Andrew Barron is giving an
invited presentation on polynomial networks.

Chuck Anderson

GTE Laboratories Inc.
40 Sylvan Road
Waltham, MA  02254
617-466-4157

canderson%gte.com at relay.cs.net