Improving generalization ability of universal learning networks with superfluous parameters

The parameters in large scale neural networks can be divided into two classes. One class is necessary for a certain purpose while another class is not directly needed. The parameters in the latter are defined as superfluous parameters. How to use these superfluous parameters effectively is an interesting subject. It is studied how the generalization ability of dynamic systems can be improved by use of networks' superfluous parameters. A calculation technique is proposed which uses second order derivatives of the criterion function with respect to superfluous parameters. So as to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed method, simulations of modeling a nonlinear robot dynamics system is studied. Simulation results show that the proposed method is useful for improving the generalization ability of neural networks, which may model nonlinear dynamic systems.