An Artificial Neural Network for the Optimal Path Planning

최적경로탐색문제를 위한 인공신경회로망

In this paper, Hopfield & Tank model-like artificial neural network structure is proposed, which can be used for the optimal path planning problems such as the unit commitment problems or the maintenance scheduling problems which have been solved by the dynamic programming method or the branch and bound method. To construct the structure of the neural network, an energy function is defined, of which the global minimum means the optimal path of the problem. To avoid falling into one of the local minima during the optimization process, the simulated annealing method is applied via making the slope of the sigmoid transfer functions steeper gradually while the process progresses. As a result, computer(IBM 386-AT 34MHz) simulations can finish the optimal unit commitment problem with 10 power units and 24 hour periods (1 hour factor) in 5 minites. Furthermore, if the full parallel neural network hardware is contructed, the optimization time will be reduced remarkably.