Nguyen Anh Tuan, Xu Jian, Luu Diu Khue, Zhao Qi, Yang Zhi
Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, U.S.A.
Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, U.S.A.
Neural Comput. 2019 Mar;31(3):555-573. doi: 10.1162/neco_a_01166. Epub 2019 Jan 15.
Redundancy is a fundamental characteristic of many biological processes such as those in the genetic, visual, muscular, and nervous systems, yet its driven mechanism has not been fully comprehended. Until recently, the only understanding of redundancy is as a mean to attain fault tolerance, which is reflected in the design of many man-made systems. On the contrary, our previous work on redundant sensing (RS) has demonstrated an example where redundancy can be engineered solely for enhancing accuracy and precision. The design was inspired by the binocular structure of human vision, which we believe may share a similar operation. In this letter, we present a unified theory describing how such utilization of redundancy is feasible through two complementary mechanisms: representational redundancy (RPR) and entangled redundancy (ETR). We also point out two additional examples where our new understanding of redundancy can be applied to justify a system's superior performance. One is the human musculoskeletal system (HMS), a biological instance, and the other is the deep residual neural network (ResNet), an artificial counterpart. We envision that our theory would provide a framework for the future development of bio-inspired redundant artificial systems, as well as assist studies of the fundamental mechanisms governing various biological processes.
冗余是许多生物过程的基本特征，如遗传、视觉、肌肉和神经系统中的过程，但其驱动机制尚未得到充分理解。直到最近，对冗余的唯一理解是作为实现容错的一种手段，这在许多人造系统的设计中都有体现。相反，我们之前关于冗余传感（RS）的工作展示了一个例子，即冗余可以专门设计用于提高准确性和精度。该设计灵感来自人类视觉的双目结构，我们认为其可能具有类似的运作方式。在这封信中，我们提出了一个统一的理论，描述了如何通过两种互补机制：表征冗余（RPR）和纠缠冗余（ETR），来实现这种对冗余的利用。我们还指出了另外两个例子，在这些例子中，我们对冗余的新理解可以用来解释一个系统的卓越性能。一个是人类肌肉骨骼系统（HMS），这是一个生物学实例，另一个是深度残差神经网络（ResNet），这是一个人工对应物。我们设想，我们的理论将为受生物启发的冗余人工系统的未来发展提供一个框架，并有助于对控制各种生物过程的基本机制的研究。
