2D spreading associative neural network simultaneously recognizes object position and shape in 2D space

The original “spreading associative neural network,” which imitates the spatial recognition system in the brain, not only recognizes the shape of an object irrespective of its position, but also recognizes its position irrespective of its shape in the input pattern when the object positional movement is limited to only one dimension. In the present study, in order to allow an object presentation in any 2D position on the plane, we propose a “2D spreading associative neural network” which spreads the input pattern in two dimensions. The proposed neural network not only recognizes the shape of the object in the 2D space irrespective of its position, but also recognizes its position irrespective of its shape in the input pattern. The position-invariant shape recognition and the shape-invariant positional recognition ability in 2D space are obtained across various kinds of objects—characters and human faces—at the same time. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 33(13): 11–23, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10171