Fusing Swarm Intelligence and Self-Assembly for Optimizing Echo State Networks

Optimizing a neural network's topology is a difficult problem for at least two reasons: the topology space is discrete, and the quality of any given topology must be assessed by assigning many different sets of weights to its connections. These two characteristics tend to cause very “rough.” objective functions. Here we demonstrate how self-assembly (SA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) can be integrated to provide a novel and effective means of concurrently optimizing a neural network's weights and topology. Combining SA and PSO addresses two key challenges. First, it creates a more integrated representation of neural network weights and topology so that we have just a single, continuous search domain that permits “smoother” objective functions. Second, it extends the traditional focus of self-assembly, from the growth of predefined target structures, to functional self-assembly, in which growth is driven by optimality criteria defined in terms of the performance of emerging structures on predefined computational problems. Our model incorporates a new way of viewing PSO that involves a population of growing, interacting networks, as opposed to particles. The effectiveness of our method for optimizing echo state network weights and topologies is demonstrated through its performance on a number of challenging benchmark problems.