Associative learning method in a hypercolumn model

We propose an associatively learnable hypercolumn model (AHCM). A hyper-column model is a self-organized, competitive, and hierarchical multilayer neural network. It is derived from the neocognitron by replacing each S cell and C cell with a two-layer hierarchical self-organizing map. The HCM can recognize images with variant object size, position, orientation and spatial resolution. However, feature maps may integrate some features extracted in the lower layer even if the features are extracted from input data which belong to different categories. The learning algorithm of the HCM causes this problem because it is an unsupervised learning used by a self-organizing map. An associative learning method is therefore introduced, which is derived from the HCM by appending associative signals and associative weights to traditional input data and connection weights, respectively. The AHCM was applied to hand-shape recognition. We found that the AHCM could generate an appropriate feature map and higher recognition accuracy compared with the HCM.