Neural Network Toolbox

Neural Network Applications

Applications in this Toolbox

Chapter 6 describes three practical neural network control system applications, including neural network model predictive control, model reference adaptive control, and a feedback linearization controller.

Other neural network applications are described in Chapter 11.

Business Applications

The 1988 DARPA Neural Network Study [DARP88] lists various neural network applications, beginning in about 1984 with the adaptive channel equalizer. This device, which is an outstanding commercial success, is a single- neuron network used in long-distance telephone systems to stabilize voice signals. The DARPA report goes on to list other commercial applications, including a small word recognizer, a process monitor, a sonar classifier, and a risk analysis system.

Neural networks have been applied in many other fields since the DARPA report was written. A list of some applications mentioned in the literature follows.

Aerospace

• High-performance aircraft autopilot, flight path simulation, aircraft control systems, autopilot enhancements, aircraft component simulation, aircraft component fault detection

Automotive

• Automobile automatic guidance system, warranty activity analysis

Banking

• Check and other document reading, credit application evaluation

Credit Card Activity Checking

• Neural networks are used to spot unusual credit card activity that might possibly be associated with loss of a credit card

Defense

• Weapon steering, target tracking, object discrimination, facial recognition, new kinds of sensors, sonar, radar and image signal processing including data compression, feature extraction and noise suppression, signal/image identification

Electronics

• Code sequence prediction, integrated circuit chip layout, process control, chip failure analysis, machine vision, voice synthesis, nonlinear modeling

Entertainment

• Animation, special effects, market forecasting

Financial

• Real estate appraisal, loan advisor, mortgage screening, corporate bond rating, credit-line use analysis, portfolio trading program, corporate financial analysis, currency price prediction

Industrial

• Neural networks are being trained to predict the output gases of furnaces and other industrial processes. They then replace complex and costly equipment used for this purpose in the past.

Insurance

• Policy application evaluation, product optimization

Manufacturing

• Manufacturing process control, product design and analysis, process and machine diagnosis, real-time particle identification, visual quality inspection systems, beer testing, welding quality analysis, paper quality prediction, computer-chip quality analysis, analysis of grinding operations, chemical product design analysis, machine maintenance analysis, project bidding, planning and management, dynamic modeling of chemical process system

Medical

• Breast cancer cell analysis, EEG and ECG analysis, prosthesis design, optimization of transplant times, hospital expense reduction, hospital quality improvement, emergency-room test advisement

Oil and Gas

• Exploration

Robotics

• Trajectory control, forklift robot, manipulator controllers, vision systems

Speech

• Speech recognition, speech compression, vowel classification, text-to-speech synthesis

Securities

• Market analysis, automatic bond rating, stock trading advisory systems

Telecommunications

• Image and data compression, automated information services, real-time translation of spoken language, customer payment processing systems

Transportation

• Truck brake diagnosis systems, vehicle scheduling, routing systems

Summary

The list of additional neural network applications, the money that has been invested in neural network software and hardware, and the depth and breadth of interest in these devices have been growing rapidly. The authors hope that this toolbox will be useful for neural network educational and design purposes within a broad field of neural network applications.

Design of General Linear Networks

Neuron Model and Network Architectures

© 1994-2005 The MathWorks, Inc.