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Echo state property (ESP) is a fundamental property that allows an input-driven dynamical system to perform information processing tasks. Recently, extensions of ESP to potentially nonstationary systems and subsystems, that is, nonstationary ESP and subset/subspace ESP, have been proposed. In this paper, we theoretically and numerically analyze the sufficient and necessary conditions for a quantum system to satisfy nonstationary ESP and subset/subspace nonstationary ESP. Based on extensive usage of the Pauli transfer matrix (PTM) form, we find that (1) the interaction with a quantum-coherent environment, termed \textit{coherence influx}, is indispensable in realizing nonstationary ESP, and (2) the spectral radius of PTM can characterize the fading memory property of quantum reservoir computing (QRC). Our numerical experiment, involving a system with a Hamiltonian that entails a spin-glass/many-body localization phase, reveals that the spectral radius of PTM can describe the dynamical phase transition intrinsic to such a system. To comprehensively understand the mechanisms under ESP of QRC, we propose a simplified model, multiplicative reservoir computing (mRC), which is a reservoir computing (RC) system with a one-dimensional multiplicative input. Theoretically and numerically, we show that the parameters corresponding to the spectral radius and coherence influx in mRC directly correlates with its linear memory capacity (MC). Our findings about QRC and mRC will provide a theoretical aspect of PTM and the input multiplicativity of QRC. The results will lead to a better understanding of QRC and information processing in open quantum systems., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures

The optimization of physical parameters serves various purposes, such as system identification and efficiency in developing devices. Spin-torque oscillators have been applied to neuromorphic computing experimentally and theoretically, but the optimization of their physical parameters has usually been done by grid search. In this paper, we propose a scheme to optimize the parameters of the dynamics of macrospin-type spin-torque oscillators using the gradient descent method with automatic differentiation. First, we prepared numerically created dynamics as teacher data and successfully tuned the parameters to reproduce the dynamics. This can be applied to obtain the correspondence between the simulation and experiment of the spin-torque oscillators. Next, we successfully solved the image recognition task with high accuracy by connecting the coupled system of spin-torque oscillators to the input and output layers and training all of them through gradient descent. This approach allowed us to estimate how to control the experimental setup and design the physical systems so that the task could be solved with a high accuracy using spin-torque oscillators.

Spiking neural networks (SNNs), the models inspired by the mechanisms of real neurons in the brain, transmit and represent information by employing discrete action potentials or spikes. The sparse, asynchronous properties of information processing make SNNs highly energy efficient, leading to SNNs being promising solutions for implementing neural networks in neuromorphic devices. However, the nondifferentiable nature of SNN neurons makes it a challenge to train them. The current training methods of SNNs that are based on error backpropagation (BP) and precisely designing surrogate gradient are difficult to implement and biologically implausible, hindering the implementation of SNNs on neuromorphic devices. Thus, it is important to train SNNs with a method that is both physically implementatable and biologically plausible. In this paper, we propose using augmented direct feedback alignment (aDFA), a gradient-free approach based on random projection, to train SNNs. This method requires only partial information of the forward process during training, so it is easy to implement and biologically plausible. We systematically demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed aDFA-SNNs scheme, propose its effective working range, and analyze its well-performing settings by employing genetic algorithm. We also analyze the impact of crucial features of SNNs on the scheme, thus demonstrating its superiority and stability over BP and conventional direct feedback alignment. Our scheme can achieve competitive performance without accurate prior knowledge about the utilized system, thus providing a valuable reference for physically training SNNs., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

The effects of noise on memory in a linear recurrent network are theoretically investigated. Memory is characterized by its ability to store previous inputs in its instantaneous state of network, which receives a correlated or uncorrelated noise. Two major properties are revealed: First, the memory reduced by noise is uniquely determined by the noise's power spectral density (PSD). Second, the memory will not decrease regardless of noise intensity if the PSD is in a certain class of distribution (including power law). The results are verified using the human brain signals, showing good agreement.

The body morphology plays an important role in the way information is perceived and processed by an agent. We address an information theory (IT) account on how the precision of sensors, the accuracy of motors, their placement, the body geometry, shape the information structure in robots and computational codes. As an original idea, we envision the robot's body as a physical communication channel through which information is conveyed, in and out, despite intrinsic noise and material limitations. Following this, entropy, a measure of information and uncertainty, can be used to maximize the efficiency of robot design and of algorithmic codes per se. This is known as the principle of Entropy Maximization (PEM) introduced in biology by Barlow in 1969. The Shannon's source coding theorem provides then a framework to compare different types of bodies in terms of sensorimotor information. In line with PME, we introduce a special class of efficient codes used in IT that reached the Shannon limits in terms of information capacity for error correction and robustness against noise, and parsimony. These efficient codes, which exploit insightfully quantization and randomness, permit to deal with uncertainty, redundancy and compacity. These features can be used for perception and control in intelligent systems. In various examples and closing discussions, we reflect on the broader implications of our framework that we called Informational Embodiment to motor theory and bio-inspired robotics, touching upon concepts like motor synergies, reservoir computing, and morphological computation. These insights can contribute to a deeper understanding of how information theory intersects with the embodiment of intelligence in both natural and artificial systems.

In the advanced field of bio-inspired robotics, the emergence of cyborgs represents the successful integration of engineering and biological systems. Building on previous research that showed how electrical stimuli could initiate and speed up a jellyfish's movement, this study presents a groundbreaking approach that explores how the natural embodied intelligence of the animal can be harnessed to address pivotal challenges such as spontaneous exploration, navigation in various environments, control of whole-body motion, and real-time predictions of behavior. We have developed a comprehensive data acquisition system and a unique setup for stimulating jellyfish, allowing for a detailed study of their movements. Through careful analysis of both spontaneous behaviors and behaviors induced by targeted stimulation, we have identified subtle differences between natural and induced motion patterns. By using a machine learning method called physical reservoir computing, we have successfully shown that future behaviors can be accurately predicted by directly measuring the jellyfish's body shape when the stimuli align with the animal's natural dynamics. Our findings also reveal significant advancements in motion control and real-time prediction capabilities of jellyfish cyborgs. In summary, this research provides a comprehensive roadmap for optimizing the capabilities of jellyfish cyborgs, with potential implications in marine reconnaissance and sustainable ecological interventions.

Chaotic dynamics are ubiquitous in nature and useful in engineering, but their geometric design can be challenging. Here, we propose a method using reservoir computing to generate chaos with a desired shape by providing a periodic orbit as a template, called a skeleton. We exploit a bifurcation of the reservoir to intentionally induce unsuccessful training of the skeleton, revealing inherent chaos. The emergence of this untrained attractor, resulting from the interaction between the skeleton and the reservoir's intrinsic dynamics, offers a novel semi-supervised framework for designing chaos., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures (excluding supplementary material)

Chaos presents complex dynamics arising from nonlinearity and a sensitivity to initial states. These characteristics suggest a depth of expressivity that underscores their potential for advanced computational applications. However, strategies to effectively exploit chaotic dynamics for information processing have largely remained elusive. In this study, we reveal that the essence of chaos can be found in various state-of-the-art deep neural networks. Drawing inspiration from this revelation, we propose a novel method that directly leverages chaotic dynamics for deep learning architectures. Our approach is systematically evaluated across distinct chaotic systems. In all instances, our framework presents superior results to conventional deep neural networks in terms of accuracy, convergence speed, and efficiency. Furthermore, we found an active role of transient chaos formation in our scheme. Collectively, this study offers a new path for the integration of chaos, which has long been overlooked in information processing, and provides insights into the prospective fusion of chaotic dynamics within the domains of machine learning and neuromorphic computation.

A continuous one-dimensional map with period three includes all periods. This raises the following question: Can we obtain any types of periodic orbits solely by learning three data points? In this letter, we report the answer to be yes. Considering a random neural network in its thermodynamic limit, we show that under certain conditions, learning period three can embed attractors with all periods into the network as a bifurcation after learning. The associated universality is explained by a topological conjugacy between the trained network and the classical logistic map., Comment: 28 pages, 24 figures

The echo state property (ESP) represents a fundamental concept in the reservoir computing (RC) framework that ensures output-only training of reservoir networks by being agnostic to the initial states and far past inputs. However, the traditional definition of ESP does not describe possible non-stationary systems in which statistical properties evolve. To address this issue, we introduce two new categories of ESP: $\textit{non-stationary ESP}$, designed for potentially non-stationary systems, and $\textit{subspace/subset ESP}$, designed for systems whose subsystems have ESP. Following the definitions, we numerically demonstrate the correspondence between non-stationary ESP in the quantum reservoir computer (QRC) framework with typical Hamiltonian dynamics and input encoding methods using non-linear autoregressive moving-average (NARMA) tasks. We also confirm the correspondence by computing linear/non-linear memory capacities that quantify input-dependent components within reservoir states. Our study presents a new understanding of the practical design of QRC and other possibly non-stationary RC systems in which non-stationary systems and subsystems are exploited., Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures

We provide high-speed implementations for simulating reservoirs described by $N$-coupled spin-torque oscillators. Here $N$ also corresponds to the number of reservoir nodes. We benchmark a variety of implementations based on CPU and GPU. Our new methods are at least 2.6 times quicker than the baseline for $N$ in range $1$ to $10^4$. More specifically, over all implementations the best factor is 78.9 for $N=1$ which decreases to 2.6 for $N=10^3$ and finally increases to 23.8 for $N=10^4$. GPU outperforms CPU significantly at $N=2500$. Our results show that GPU implementations should be tested for reservoir simulations. The implementations considered here can be used for any reservoir with evolution that can be approximated using an explicit method.

Reservoir computing is a machine learning framework that uses artificial or physical dissipative dynamics to predict time-series data using nonlinearity and memory properties of dynamical systems. Quantum systems are considered as promising reservoirs, but the conventional quantum reservoir computing (QRC) models have problems in the execution time. In this paper, we develop a quantum reservoir (QR) system that exploits repeated measurement to generate a time-series, which can effectively reduce the execution time. We experimentally implement the proposed QRC on the IBM's quantum superconducting device and show that it achieves higher accuracy as well as shorter execution time than the conventional QRC method. Furthermore, we study the temporal information processing capacity to quantify the computational capability of the proposed QRC; in particular, we use this quantity to identify the measurement strength that best tradeoffs the amount of available information and the strength of dissipation. An experimental demonstration with soft robot is also provided, where the repeated measurement over 1000 timesteps was effectively applied. Finally, a preliminary result with 120 qubits device is discussed.

A new research topic in spintronics relating to the operation principles of brain-inspired computing is input-driven magnetization dynamics in nanomagnet. In this paper, the magnetization dynamics in a vortex spin-torque oscillator (STO) driven by a series of random magnetic field are studied through a numerical simulation of the Thiele equation. It is found that input-driven synchronization occurs in the weak perturbation limit, as found recently. As well, chaotic behavior is newly found to occur in the vortex core dynamics for a wide range of parameters, where synchronized behavior is disrupted by an intermittency. Ordered and chaotic dynamical phases are examined by evaluating the Lyapunov exponent. The relation between the dynamical phase and the computational capability of physical reservoir computing is also studied., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

Harnessing complex body dynamics has been a long-standing challenge in robotics. Soft body dynamics is a typical example of high complexity in interacting with the environment. An increasing number of studies have reported that these dynamics can be used as a computational resource. This includes the McKibben pneumatic artificial muscle, which is a typical soft actuator. This study demonstrated that various dynamics, including periodic and chaotic dynamics, could be embedded into the pneumatic artificial muscle, with the entire bifurcation structure using the framework of physical reservoir computing. These results suggest that dynamics that are not presented in training data could be embedded by using this capability of bifurcation embeddment. This implies that it is possible to embed various qualitatively different patterns into pneumatic artificial muscle by learning specific patterns, without the need to design and learn all patterns required for the purpose. Thus, this study sheds new light on a novel pathway to simplify the robotic devices and training of the control by reducing the external pattern generators and the amount and types of training data for the control.

A numerical analysis on the computational capability of physical reservoir computing utilizing a spin-torque oscillator with two free layers is reported. Conventional spintronics devices usually consist of two ferromagnets, where the direction of magnetization in one layer, called the free layer, can move while that of the other, the reference layer, is fixed. Recently, however, devices with two free layers, where the reference layer is replaced by another free layer, have been developed for various practical applications. Adding another free layer drastically changes the dynamical response of the device through the couplings via the spin-transfer effect and the dipole magnetic field. A numerical simulation of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation and a statistical analyses of the Lyapunov exponent and the synchronization index reveal the appearance of an amplitude-modulated oscillation and chaos in the oscillators with two free layers. Such complex dynamics qualitatively change the computational capability of physical reservoir computing because the computational resource is dynamics of the physical system. An evaluation of the short-term memory capacity clarifies that oscillators with two free layers have a larger capacity than those of conventional oscillators. An enhancement in capacity near the edge of echo state property, i.e., the boundary between zero and finite synchronization index, is also found., Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures

Readiness potential is a widely observed brain activity in several species including crayfish before the spontaneous behavioral initiation. However, it is poorly understood how this spontaneous activity is generated. The hypothesis that some specific, dedicated site is responsible for the spontaneity has been questioned. Here, by using intracellular recording and staining of the brain neurons in crayfish and modeling using the sandpile, which is the original model of self-organized criticality (SOC), we show that readiness potential can emerge everywhere in the brain because it is a SOC system. Despite the diversity in neurons and their morphology, brain neurons showed signatures of criticality and readiness potential. We find that the previously known readiness potential in a neuron is a consequence of the critical behavior of the entire network. Indeed, seemingly unrelated membrane potential activity in neurons in different animals can shape readiness potential when its time series are averaged after their alignment with respect to the spontaneous behavioral initiation. We show that the sandpile model not made for the potential, can form the premovement buildup activity similar to readiness potential. Scaling properties of the synaptic avalanches are in line with those of vertebrate species; thus, not only is the critical brain hypothesis supported in crayfish, but our findings might also provide a unified view of the basis of spontaneity in animal behavior.

Current technologies in quantum-based communications bring a new integration of quantum data with classical data for hybrid processing. However, the frameworks of these technologies are restricted to a single classical or quantum task, which limits their flexibility in near-term applications. We propose a quantum reservoir processor to harness quantum dynamics in computational tasks requiring both classical and quantum inputs. This analog processor comprises a network of quantum dots in which quantum data is incident to the network and classical data is encoded via a coherent field exciting the network. We perform a multitasking application of quantum tomography and nonlinear equalization of classical channels. Interestingly, the tomography can be performed in a closed-loop manner via the feedback control of classical data. Therefore, if the classical input comes from a dynamical system, embedding this system in a closed loop enables hybrid processing even if access to the external classical input is interrupted. Finally, we demonstrate preparing quantum depolarizing channels as a novel quantum machine learning technique for quantum data processing., Comment: Main: 11 pages with 5 figures; Supplementary Material: 18 pages with 15 figures

Quantum computing has been moving from a theoretical phase to practical one, presenting daunting challenges in implementing physical qubits, which are subjected to noises from the surrounding environment. These quantum noises are ubiquitous in quantum devices and generate adverse effects in the quantum computational model, leading to extensive research on their correction and mitigation techniques. But do these quantum noises always provide disadvantages? We tackle this issue by proposing a framework called quantum noise-induced reservoir computing and show that some abstract quantum noise models can induce useful information processing capabilities for temporal input data. We demonstrate this ability in several typical benchmarks and investigate the information processing capacity to clarify the framework's processing mechanism and memory profile. We verified our perspective by implementing the framework in a number of IBM quantum processors and obtained similar characteristic memory profiles with model analyses. As a surprising result, information processing capacity increased with quantum devices' higher noise levels and error rates. Our study opens up a novel path for diverting useful information from quantum computer noises into a more sophisticated information processor.

Echo state network (ESN), a kind of recurrent neural networks, consists of a fixed reservoir in which neurons are connected randomly and recursively and obtains the desired output only by training output connection weights. First-order reduced and controlled error (FORCE) learning is an online supervised training approach that can change the chaotic activity of ESNs into specified activity patterns. This paper proposes a composite FORCE learning method based on recursive least squares to train ESNs whose initial activity is spontaneously chaotic, where a composite learning technique featured by dynamic regressor extension and memory data exploitation is applied to enhance parameter convergence. The proposed method is applied to a benchmark problem about predicting chaotic time series generated by the Mackey-Glass system, and numerical results have shown that it significantly improves learning and prediction performances compared with existing methods., Comment: Submitted to 2022 Chinese Control Conference

The ever-growing demand for further advances in artificial intelligence motivated research on unconventional computation based on analog physical devices. While such computation devices mimic brain-inspired analog information processing, learning procedures still relies on methods optimized for digital processing such as backpropagation. Here, we present physical deep learning by extending a biologically plausible training algorithm called direct feedback alignment. As the proposed method is based on random projection with arbitrary nonlinear activation, we can train a physical neural network without knowledge about the physical system. In addition, we can emulate and accelerate the computation for this training on a simple and scalable physical system. We demonstrate the proof-of-concept using a hierarchically connected optoelectronic recurrent neural network called deep reservoir computer. By constructing an FPGA-assisted optoelectronic benchtop, we confirmed the potential for accelerated computation with competitive performance on benchmarks. Our results provide practical solutions for the training and acceleration of neuromorphic computation.

Language is an outcome of our complex and dynamic human-interactions and the technique of natural language processing (NLP) is hence built on human linguistic activities. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) has recently gained its popularity by establishing the state-of-the-art scores in several NLP benchmarks. A Lite BERT (ALBERT) is literally characterized as a lightweight version of BERT, in which the number of BERT parameters is reduced by repeatedly applying the same neural network called Transformer's encoder layer. By pre-training the parameters with a massive amount of natural language data, ALBERT can convert input sentences into versatile high-dimensional vectors potentially capable of solving multiple NLP tasks. In that sense, ALBERT can be regarded as a well-designed high-dimensional dynamical system whose operator is the Transformer's encoder, and essential structures of human language are thus expected to be encapsulated in its dynamics. In this study, we investigated the embedded properties of ALBERT to reveal how NLP tasks are effectively solved by exploiting its dynamics. We thereby aimed to explore the nature of human language from the dynamical expressions of the NLP model. Our short-term analysis clarified that the pre-trained model stably yields trajectories with higher dimensionality, which would enhance the expressive capacity required for NLP tasks. Also, our long-term analysis revealed that ALBERT intrinsically shows transient chaos, a typical nonlinear phenomenon showing chaotic dynamics only in its transient, and the pre-trained ALBERT model tends to produce the chaotic trajectory for a significantly longer time period compared to a randomly-initialized one. Our results imply that local chaoticity would contribute to improving NLP performance, uncovering a novel aspect in the role of chaotic dynamics in human language behaviors., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

Quantifying and verifying the control level in preparing a quantum state are central challenges in building quantum devices. The quantum state is characterized from experimental measurements, using a procedure known as tomography, which requires a vast number of resources. Furthermore, the tomography for a quantum device with temporal processing, which is fundamentally different from the standard tomography, has not been formulated. We develop a practical and approximate tomography method using a recurrent machine learning framework for this intriguing situation. The method is based on repeated quantum interactions between a system called quantum reservoir with a stream of quantum states. Measurement data from the reservoir are connected to a linear readout to train a recurrent relation between quantum channels applied to the input stream. We demonstrate our algorithms for quantum learning tasks followed by the proposal of a quantum short-term memory capacity to evaluate the temporal processing ability of near-term quantum devices., Comment: Main: 6 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary: 29 pages -> Revised version; Close to the accepted version. The results of tomography task for the quantum switch have been added to the Supplementary Material

Physical reservoir computing is a type of recurrent neural network that applies the dynamical response from physical systems to information processing. However, the relation between computation performance and physical parameters/phenomena still remains unclear. This study reports our progress regarding the role of current-dependent magnetic damping in the computational performance of reservoir computing. The current-dependent relaxation dynamics of a magnetic vortex core results in an asymmetric memory function with respect to binary inputs. A fast relaxation caused by a large input leads to a fast fading of the input memory, whereas a slow relaxation by a small input enables the reservoir to keep the input memory for a relatively long time. As a result, a step-like dependence is found for the short-term memory and parity-check capacities on the pulse width of input data, where the capacities remain at 1.5 for a certain range of the pulse width, and drop to 1.0 for a long pulse-width limit. Both analytical and numerical analyses clarify that the step-like behavior can be attributed to the current-dependent relaxation time of the vortex core to a limit-cycle state. }, Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

Quantum systems have an exponentially large degree of freedom in the number of particles and hence provide a rich dynamics that could not be simulated on conventional computers. Quantum reservoir computing is an approach to use such a complex and rich dynamics on the quantum systems as it is for temporal machine learning. In this chapter, we explain quantum reservoir computing and related approaches, quantum extreme learning machine and quantum circuit learning, starting from a pedagogical introduction to quantum mechanics and machine learning. All these quantum machine learning approaches are experimentally feasible and effective on the state-of-the-art quantum devices., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures

Encoding classical data into quantum states is considered a quantum feature map to map classical data into a quantum Hilbert space. This feature map provides opportunities to incorporate quantum advantages into machine learning algorithms to be performed on near-term intermediate-scale quantum computers. The crucial idea is using the quantum Hilbert space as a quantum-enhanced feature space in machine learning models. While the quantum feature map has demonstrated its capability when combined with linear classification models in some specific applications, its expressive power from the theoretical perspective remains unknown. We prove that the machine learning models induced from the quantum-enhanced feature space are universal approximators of continuous functions under typical quantum feature maps. We also study the capability of quantum feature maps in the classification of disjoint regions. Our work enables an important theoretical analysis to ensure that machine learning algorithms based on quantum feature maps can handle a broad class of machine learning tasks. In light of this, one can design a quantum machine learning model with more powerful expressivity., Comment: Main (6 pages, 2 figures); Supplemental material (13 pages, 1 figure); Close to the published version; T. G. and Q. H. T. contributed equally to this work. K.N. and Q.H.T. were supported by MEXT Quantum Leap Flagship Program (MEXT Q-LEAP) Grant Nos. JPMXS0118067394 and JPMXS0120319794

The role of the feedback effect on physical reservoir computing is studied theoretically by solving the vortex-core dynamics in a nanostructured ferromagnet. Although the spin-transfer torque due to the feedback current makes the vortex dynamics complex, it is clarified that the feedback effect does not always contribute to the enhancement of the memory function in a physical reservoir. The memory function, characterized by the correlation coefficient between the input data and the dynamical response of the vortex core, becomes large when the delay time of the feedback current is not an integral multiple of the pulse width. On the other hand, the memory function remains small when the delay time is an integral multiple of the pulse width. As a result, a periodic behavior for the short-term memory capacity is observed with respect to the delay time, the phenomenon of which can be attributed to correlations between the virtual neurons via the feedback current., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures

Quantum reservoir computing (QRC) is an emerging paradigm for harnessing the natural dynamics of quantum systems as computational resources that can be used for temporal machine learning tasks. In the current setup, QRC is difficult to deal with high-dimensional data and has a major drawback of scalability in physical implementations. We propose higher-order QRC, a hybrid quantum-classical framework consisting of multiple but small quantum systems that are mutually communicated via classical connections like linear feedback. By utilizing the advantages of both classical and quantum techniques, our framework enables an efficient implementation to boost the scalability and performance of QRC. Furthermore, higher-order settings allow us to implement a FORCE learning or an innate training scheme, which provides flexibility and high operability to harness high-dimensional quantum dynamics and significantly extends the application domain of QRC. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework in emulating large-scale nonlinear dynamical systems, including complex spatiotemporal chaos, which outperforms many of the existing machine learning techniques in certain situations., Comment: main (15 pages, 12 pictures), add "Quantum-innate training"

Understanding the fundamental relationships between physics and its information-processing capability has been an active research topic for many years. Physical reservoir computing is a recently introduced framework that allows one to exploit the complex dynamics of physical systems as information-processing devices. This framework is particularly suited for edge computing devices, in which information processing is incorporated at the edge (e.g., into sensors) in a decentralized manner to reduce the adaptation delay caused by data transmission overhead. This paper aims to illustrate the potentials of the framework using examples from soft robotics and to provide a concise overview focusing on the basic motivations for introducing it, which stem from a number of fields, including machine learning, nonlinear dynamical systems, biological science, materials science, and physics., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures

Chaotic itinerancy is a frequently observed phenomenon in high-dimensional and nonlinear dynamical systems, and it is characterized by the random transitions among multiple quasi-attractors. Several studies have revealed that chaotic itinerancy has been observed in brain activity, and it is considered to play a critical role in the spontaneous, stable behavior generation of animals. Thus, chaotic itinerancy is a topic of great interest, particularly for neurorobotics researchers who wish to understand and implement autonomous behavioral controls for agents. However, it is generally difficult to gain control over high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems. Hence, the implementation of chaotic itinerancy has mainly been accomplished heuristically. In this study, we propose a novel way of implementing chaotic itinerancy reproducibly and at will in a generic high-dimensional chaotic system. In particular, we demonstrate that our method enables us to easily design both the trajectories of quasi-attractors and the transition rules among them simply by adjusting the limited number of system parameters and by utilizing the intrinsic high-dimensional chaos. Finally, we quantitatively discuss the validity and scope of application through the results of several numerical experiments., Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures and 1 supplementary figure. Our supplementary videos are available in https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10iB23OMHQfFIRejZstoXMJRpnpm3-3H5?usp=sharing

Herein, the Karman vortex system is considered to be a large recurrent neural network, and the computational capability is numerically evaluated by emulating nonlinear dynamical systems and the memory capacity. Therefore, the Reynolds number dependence of the Karman vortex system computational performance is revealed and the optimal computational performance is achieved near the critical Reynolds number at the onset of Karman vortex shedding, which is associated with a Hopf bifurcation. Our finding advances the understanding of the relationship between the physical properties of fluid dynamics and its computational capability as well as provides an alternative to the widely believed viewpoint that the information processing capability becomes optimal at the edge of chaos., Comment: 17pages, 8 figures(including supplementary materials)

The ability of discrete-time nonlinear recurrent neural networks to store time-varying small input signals is investigated by mean-field theory. The combination of a small input strength and mean-field assumptions makes it possible to derive an approximate expression for the conditional probability density of the state of a neuron given a past input signal. From this conditional probability density, we can analytically calculate short-term memory measures, such as memory capacity, mutual information, and Fisher information, and determine the relationships among these measures, which have not been clarified to date to the best of our knowledge. We show that the network contribution of these short-term memory measures peaks before the edge of chaos, where the dynamics of input-driven networks is stable but corresponding systems without input signals are unstable.

Nonlinear magnetization dynamics excited by spin-transfer effect with feedback current is studied both numerically and analytically. The numerical simulation of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation indicates the positive Lyapunov exponent for a certain range of the feedback rate, which identifies the existence of chaos in a nanostructured ferromagnet. Transient behavior from chaotic to steady oscillation is also observed in another range of the feedback parameter. An analytical theory is also developed, which indicates the appearance of multiple attractors in a phase space due to the feedback current. An instantaneous imbalance between the spin-transfer torque and damping torque causes a transition between the attractors, and results in the complex dynamics.

A dynamical system can be regarded as an information processing apparatus that encodes input streams from the external environment to its state and processes them through state transitions. The information processing capacity (IPC) is an excellent tool that comprehensively evaluates these processed inputs, providing details of unknown information processing in black box systems; however, this measure can be applied to only time-invariant systems. This paper extends the applicable range to time-variant systems and further reveals that the IPC is equivalent to coefficients of polynomial chaos (PC) expansion in more general dynamical systems. To achieve this objective, we tackle three issues. First, we establish a connection between the IPC for time-invariant systems and PC expansion, which is a type of polynomial expansion using orthogonal functions of input history as bases. We prove that the IPC corresponds to the squared norm of the coefficient vector of the basis in the PC expansion. Second, we show that an input following an arbitrary distribution can be used for the IPC, removing previous restrictions to specific input distributions. Third, we extend the conventional orthogonal bases to functions of both time and input history and propose the IPC for time-variant systems. To show the significance of our approach, we demonstrate that our measure can reveal information representations in not only machine learning networks but also a real, cultured neural network. Our generalized measure paves the way for unveiling the information processing capabilities of a wide variety of physical dynamics which has been left behind in nature., Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures

Soft Continuum arms, such as trunk and tentacle robots, can be considered as the "dual" of traditional rigid-bodied robots in terms of manipulability, degrees of freedom, and compliance. Introduced two decades ago, continuum arms have not yet realized their full potential, and largely remain as laboratory curiosities. The reasons for this lag rest upon their inherent physical features such as high compliance which contribute to their complex control problems that no research has yet managed to surmount. Recently, reservoir computing has been suggested as a way to employ the body dynamics as a computational resource toward implementing compliant body control. In this paper, as a first step, we investigate the information processing capability of soft continuum arms. We apply input signals of varying amplitude and bandwidth to a soft continuum arm and generate the dynamic response for a large number of trials. These data is aggregated and used to train the readout weights to implement a reservoir computing scheme. Results demonstrate that the information processing capability varies across input signal bandwidth and amplitude. These preliminary results demonstrate that soft continuum arms have optimal bandwidth and amplitude where one can implement reservoir computing., Comment: Submitted to 2019 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2019)