Neuromimetic Linear Systems — Resilience and Learning

Building on our recent work on neuromimetic control theory, new results on resilience and neuro-inspired quantization are reported. The term neuromimetic refers to the models having features that are characteristic of the neurobiology of biological motor control. As in previous work, the focus is on what we call overcomplete linear systems that are characterized by larger numbers of input and output channels than the dimensions of the state. The specific contributions of the present paper include a proposed resilient observer whose operation tolerates input and output channel intermittency and even complete dropouts. Tying these ideas together with our previous work on resilient stability, a resilient separation principle is established. We also propose a principled quantization in which control signals are encoded as simple discrete inputs which act collectively through the many channels of input that are the hallmarks of the overcomplete models. Aligned with the neuromimetic paradigm, an emulation problem is proposed and this in turn defines an optimal quantization problem. Several possible solutions are discussed including direct combinatorial optimization, a Hebbian-like iterative learning algorithm, and a deep Q-learning (DQN) approach. For the problems being considered, machine learning approaches to optimization provide valuable insights regarding comparisons between optimal and nearby suboptimal solutions. These are useful in understanding the kinds of resilience to intermittency and channel dropouts that were earlier demonstrated for continuous systems.