Quantum neural networks (QNN's): Inherently fuzzy feedforward neural networks

This paper introduces quantum neural networks (QNN's), a class of feedforward neural networks (FFNN's) inherently capable of estimating the structure of a feature space in the form of fuzzy sets. The hidden units of these networks develop quantized representations of the sample information provided by the training data set in various graded levels of certainty. Unlike other approaches attempting to merge fuzzy logic and neural networks, QNN's can be used in pattern classification problems without any restricting assumptions such as the availability of a priori knowledge or desired membership profile, convexity of classes, a limited number of classes, etc. Experimental results presented here show that QNN's are capable of recognizing structures in data, a property that conventional FFNN's with sigmoidal hidden units lack.