Varieties of learning automata: an overview

Automata models of learning systems introduced in the 1960s were popularized as learning automata (LA) in a survey paper by Narendra and Thathachar (1974). Since then, there have been many fundamental advances in the theory as well as applications of these learning models. In the past few years, the structure of LA, has been modified in several directions to suit different applications. Concepts such as parameterized learning automata (PLA), generalized learning,automata (GLA), and continuous action-set learning automata (CALA) have been proposed, analyzed, and applied to solve many significant learning problems. Furthermore, groups of LA forming teams and feedforward networks have been shown to converge to desired solutions under appropriate learning algorithms. Modules of LA have been used for parallel operation with consequent increase in speed of convergence. All of these concepts and results are relatively new and are scattered in technical literature. An attempt has been made in this paper to bring together the main ideas involved in a unified framework and provide pointers to relevant references.