Reservoir computing based on solitary-like waves dynamics of liquid film flows: A proof of concept

¹ Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Futures Institute, Charles Sturt University - Bathurst, NSW 2795, Australia
² Department of Mathematics, Swinburne University of Technology - Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia

^(a) E-mail: imaksymov@csu.edu.au (corresponding author)

Received: 3 March 2023
Accepted: 11 May 2023

Abstract

Several theoretical works have shown that solitons —waves that self-maintain constant shape and velocity as they propagate— can be used as a physical computational reservoir, a concept where machine learning algorithms designed for digital computers are replaced by analog physical systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamical behaviour. Here we propose and experimentally validate a novel reservoir computing (RC) system that for the first time employs solitary-like (SL) waves propagating on the surface of a liquid film flowing over an inclined surface. We demonstrate the ability of the SL wave RC system (SLRC) to forecast chaotic time series, also producing experimental evidence of the possibility to combine RC with nonlinear vector autoregression techniques not only in a computer program but also in a physical system.