Learning to Abstract and Compose Mechanical Device Function and Behavior

Abstract

While current neural networks (NNs) are becoming good at deriving single types of abstractions for a small set of phenomena, for example, using a single NN to predict a flow velocity field, NNs are not good at composing large systems as compositions of small phenomena and reasoning about their interactions. We want to study how NNs build both the abstraction and composition of phenomena when a single NN model cannot suffice. Rather than a single NN that learns one physical or social phenomenon, we want a group of NNs that learn to abstract, compose, reason, and correct the behaviors of different parts in a system. In this paper, we investigate the joint use of Physics-Informed (Navier-Stokes equations) Deep Neural Networks (i.e., Deconvolutional Neural Networks) as well as Geometric Deep Learning (i.e., Graph Neural Networks) to learn and compose fluid component behavior. Our models successfully predict the fluid flows and their composition behaviors (i.e., velocity fields) with an accuracy of about 99%.