Skip to main content

Neural Nets and Diversity

  • Conference paper
Book cover Safe Comp 95

Abstract

Although the issue of reliability is extensively discussed in the software engineering literature, it has received only limited attention in the Neural Computing community. In this paper, the software engineering concept of diversity is made use of to improve the performance of a neural net system solution to a problem of fault diagnosis in a marine diesel engine. Essentially the aim here was to find methods of creating a set of solutions which are diverse in the sense that they each fail on different inputs. A truly diverse set of solutions can be combined by means of a majority voter to yield 100% generalisation performance. The issue of identifying the best ways to promote diversity in neural nets was investigated in terms of a fault diagnosis problem in a marine engine. It was concluded that two effective methods for creating diverse solutions were (i) to take data from two different sensors, or (ii) to create new data sets by subjecting the set of inputs to non-linear transformations. These conclusions have far reaching implications for other Neural Net applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Adams, J.M. and Taha, A. (1992) “An Experiment in Software Redundancy with Diverse Methodologies,” Proc of the Twenty-Fifth Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Avizienis, A. & Kelly, J.P.J. (1984) Fault diagnosis by design diversity: Concepts and experiments. IEEE Comput. 17, 8, 67–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Banisoleiman, K., Smith, L.A., & Matheieson, N. (1993) Simulation of diesel engine performance, Trans of the Institute of Marine Engineers, 105 (3) 117–135.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cottrell, G.W., Munro, P. & Zipser, D. (1989) “Image compression by back propagation: An example of extensional programming”, In (Ed.) Noel E. Sharkey, Models of Cognition: a review of Cognitive Science, Ablex, New Jersey, 208–241.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Dahll, G. and Lahti, J. (1980) “An investigation of methods for production and verification of highly reliable software”, In L. Lauber (ed) Safety of Computer Control Systems (Proc. SAFECOMP’79), New York: Pergamon.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Denker, J., Schwartz, D., Wittner, B., et al (1987) Large automatic learning, rule extraction and generalisation. Complex Systems 1, 877–822.

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Gopinath, O.C. (1994) “A neural net solution for diesel engine fault diagnosis”, MSc thesis, University of Sheffield.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Knight, J.C. and Leveson, N.G. (1986) An experimental evaluation of independence in multiversion programming. Trans on Software Eng, Vol SE- 12 no 1.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Littlewood, B. and Miller, D.R. (1989) Conceptual modeling of coincident failures in multiversion software. IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 15, (12).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Martin, D.J. (1983) Dissimilar software in high integrity applications in flight controls,” In Software for Avionics (AGARD Conf. Proc. 330), Jan, 1983, pp36-1–36-9.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Partridge, D. & Sharkey, N.E. (1994) Neural computing for software reliability. Expert Systems, 11, 3, 167–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Ramamoorthy, C.V., Mok, Y.R., Bastani, E.B., Chin, G.H. and Suzuki, K. (1981) “Application of a methodology for the development and validation of reliable process control software” IEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol SE-7, pp 537–555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Sharkey, A.J.C. and Sharkey, N.E. (in press) Cognitive Modelling: Psychology and Connectionism. In (Ed.) M.A. Arbib The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks, Bradford Books/MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Sharkey, A.J.C., Sharkey, N.E. and Gopinath, O.C. Diversity, (1995) Neural Nets and Safety Critical Applications. In Proceedings of The Second Swedish National Conference on Connectionism. pp 165–178. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale: New Jersey.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Sharkey, N.E., Neary, J. and Sharkey, A.J.C. (1995) Searching weight space for backpropagation solution types. In Proceedings of The Second Swedish National Conference on Connectionism. pp 103–120. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale: New Jersey.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sharkey, N.E. and Partridge, D.P. (1992) The statistical independence of network generalisation: an application in software engineering. In P.G. Lisboa & M.J. Taylor (Eds) Neural Networks: Techniques and Applications Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Sharkey, N.E. and Sharkey, A.J.C. (1993) Adaptive Generalisation. Artificial Intelligence Review, 7, 313–328.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. Taylor, J.R. (1981) “Letters from the editor”, ACM Software Eng Notes, vol 6, no 1, pp 1–2.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1995 Springer-Verlag London

About this paper

Cite this paper

Sharkey, A.J.C., Sharkey, N.E., Chandroth, G.O. (1995). Neural Nets and Diversity. In: Rabe, G. (eds) Safe Comp 95. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3054-3_25

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3054-3_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-19962-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-3054-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics