Invariance and neural nets.

Application of neural nets to invariant pattern recognition is considered. The authors study various techniques for obtaining this invariance with neural net classifiers and identify the invariant-feature technique as the most suitable for current neural classifiers. A novel formulation of invariance in terms of constraints on the feature values leads to a general method for transforming any given feature space so that it becomes invariant to specified transformations. A case study using range imagery is used to exemplify these ideas, and good performance is obtained.