The van der Pol physical reservoir computer

Abstract

The van der Pol oscillator has historical and practical significance to spiking neural networks. It was proposed as one of the first models for heart oscillations, and it has been used as the building block for spiking neural networks. Furthermore, the van der Pol oscillator is also readily implemented as an electronic circuit. For these reasons, we chose to implement the van der Pol oscillator as a physical reservoir computer to highlight its computational ability, even when it is not in an array. The van der Pol physical reservoir computer is explored using various logical tasks with numerical simulations, and a field-programmable analog array circuit for the van der Pol system is constructed to verify its use as a reservoir computer. As the van der Pol oscillator can be easily constructed with commercial-off-the-shelf circuit components, this physical reservoir computer could be a viable option for computing on edge devices. We believe this is the first time that the van der Pol oscillator has been demonstrated as a physical reservoir computer.