This week, I have been mainly working on my new neural network project, and working with the BLRMS channels.

New Neural Network Project:

Rana and I read a paper which demonstrated the use of a neural network to control an inverted pendulum. Since the test masses are, in simplest terms coupled harmonic oscillators with six degrees of freedom, we suspect something similar can be done. The logic behind trying to use a neural network as a control system lies in the fact that the actual motion of the test masses is a complicated function of many variables (including environment variables, such as temperature and seismic disturbance as well), and neural networks, at the core, are function approximators, which can approximate a function as a combination of polynomials (with error 0 in a closed interval) or of sigmoidal functions (which, in the papers I've read, seems to be possible in practice - the authors also reference some theoretical results regarding this). Thus, this network could, in theory take the displacement in the degrees of freedom of the OSEMS and generate the actuation force.

However, there was the question of building a neural network which explicitly took the history of a time series into account, and not only implicitly in the neuron weights. Thus, I found recurrent neural networks, which, for some T (this will ultimately be related to the sampling frequency, or spectrum of the signal),  has T hidden sub-layers which pass in the output of the T previous iterations.

I have written Matlab code that generates, for a given T and neuron vector (the number of neurons in each of the T layers) a recurrent neural network (it still, like my old network, uses gradient descent and sigmoidal activation functions). However, I needed a system to run it on, so I began playing around with Simulink. I have never used this system before, so I took a bit of time doing the tutorials, but I currently have a damped, driven harmonic oscillator which accepts a force at each time step and outputs a displacement (taking into account the earlier forces). This afternoon, I think I will link it to my recurrent neural network, which can accept a displacement and output a force, and see what happens. These networks are notoriously slow to converge, but I could at least check to see that my code (and understanding of the algorithm) is correct. Should this work, I can also try hooking it up to Sasha's simulation, which is more complex than an oscillator with one degree of freedom.

As Far as Seismic Things Go:

I haven't worked with seismic noise itself very much this week, although the signals could be used as inputs to a neural network. I moved the STS1 and GUR1 cables, which I realized were crossed and thus stupidly placed (my fault) and now have STS1 on the very end of the Y arm (GUR1 is about 10 meters down the X arm, however, so Jenne and I will probably have to make a cable). I also found granite and foam, so at least the STS can be given a final position at the end of the arm.

BLRMS:

I added two new channels to the BRLMS, for 0.01 - 0.03 Hz and 0.03 - 0.1 Hz, so that we can better observe distant earthquakes. I also changed the MEDM screen for all of the ACC, GUR, and STS RMS channels (I think Liz is also using this for her MIC channels), combining the low pass and high pass filter screens into a screen demonstrating the complete RMS process, which squaring and square roots. I have also changed the RMS filters, and wrote an Elog about that process.

The paper Rana and I read is Charles W. Anderson, Learning to Control and Inverted Pendulum Using Neural Networks

A good paper of recurrent neural network basics is Mikael Boden, "A guide to recurrent neural networks and backpropagation"