recurrent neural network
EVOLINO stands for EVolution of recurrent systems with Optimal LINear Output. EVOLINO- based LSTM recurrent networks learn to solve several previously unlearnable tasks.

Some Evolino Publications:

Jürgen Schmidhuber's page on

EVOLINO
(updated 2008)

A new class of learning algorithms for
supervised recurrent neural networks (RNNs)

Feedback Network
RNN
main
page
5. J. Schmidhuber, D. Wierstra, M. Gagliolo, F. Gomez. Training Recurrent Networks by Evolino. Neural Computation, 19(3): 757-779, 2007. PDF.
4. H. Mayer, F. Gomez, D. Wierstra, I. Nagy, A. Knoll, and J. Schmidhuber (2006). A System for Robotic Heart Surgery that Learns to Tie Knots Using Recurrent Neural Networks. Proc. IROS-06, Beijing. PDF.
3. J. Schmidhuber, D. Wierstra, F. J. Gomez. Evolino: Hybrid Neuroevolution / Optimal Linear Search for Sequence Learning. Proceedings of the 19th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), Edinburgh, p. 853-858, 2005. PDF.
2. D. Wierstra, F. Gomez, J. Schmidhuber. Modeling systems with internal state using Evolino. In Proc. of the 2005 conference on genetic and evolutionary computation (GECCO), Washington, D. C., pp. 1795-1802, ACM Press, New York, NY, USA, 2005. PDF. Got a GECCO best paper award.
1. J. Schmidhuber, M. Gagliolo, D. Wierstra, F. Gomez. Evolino for Recurrent Support Vector Machines. TR IDSIA-19-05, v2, 15 Dec 2005. PDF. Short version at ESANN 2006.
Evolino using LSTM, MSE, and pseudoinverse
Basic principle: Evolve an RNN population; to obtain some RNN's fitness DO: Feed the training sequences into the RNN. This yields sequences of hidden unit activations. Compute an optimal linear mapping from hidden to target trajectories. The fitness of the recurrent hidden units is the RNN performance on a validation set, given this mapping.

If the goal is to minimize mean squared error, then use the pseudoinverse for computing the optimal mapping (left).

If the goal is to maximize the margin, then use quadratic programming. This yields Recurrent Support Vector Machines.

A recent journal publication on an EVOLINO application to Robotics:
H. Mayer, F. Gomez, D. Wierstra, I. Nagy, A. Knoll, and J. Schmidhuber. A System for Robotic Heart Surgery that Learns to Tie Knots Using Recurrent Neural Networks. Advanced Robotics, 22/13-14, p. 1521-1537, 2008, in press.

RNN-Evolution Evolution
Evo
page

RNN
Evo
page

More on ESP etc. also in the IDSIA pages of Tino Gomez and Daan Wierstra

Evolino SOURCE CODE in our PYBRAIN Machine Learning Library - see video.

Experiments: EVOLINO- trained LSTM RNNs with co-evolving hidden neurons can learn to predict several time series that Echo State nets (Jaeger, Science 2004) and other traditional RNNs cannot learn, such as superimposed sines out of phase (right) or certain input streams based on grammatical rules.

Fibonacci web design
by J. Schmidhuber

typical LSTM cell
EVOLINO-based LSTM was able to learn up to 5 sines (above: 3 sines, with zoom on detail), certain context-sensitive grammars, and the Mackey- Glass time series (top of this page), which is not a very good RNN benchmark though, since even feedforward nets can learn it well. Sometimes Evolino-LSTM outperformed Gradient-LSTM on problems where LSTM-based systems were the only competitors (since traditional RNNs or HMMs did not work).