PARALLEL, MULTI-UNIT, ADAPTIVE, NONLINEAR PATTERN CLASS SEPARATOR AND IDENTIFIER

A system is disclosed for separating and identifying classes of patterns or events which are not necessarily linearly separable. The patterns are represented by an input signal S. The system comprises (1) a plurality of classification units, connected in parallel to receive the input signal S, and (2) a class selection device, responsive to the output signals produced by the classification units, for producing a single output response R representing the class of each respective pattern. In a preferred embodiment each classification unit includes a pattern feature encoding device, responsive to the input signal S, for producing an intermediate signal F.sub.i representative of the features contained in the pattern, and a pattern classifier, responsive to the signal F.sub.i, for producing an output signal R.sub.i representative of the respective class of the pattern, as identified by the features encoded by the feature encoding device.