Interpretable polynomial neural ordinary differential equations

Abstract

Neural networks have the ability to serve as universal function approximators, but they are not interpretable and do not generalize well outside of their training region. Both of these issues are problematic when trying to apply standard neural ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to dynamical systems. We introduce the polynomial neural ODE, which is a deep polynomial neural network inside of the neural ODE framework. We demonstrate the capability of polynomial neural ODEs to predict outside of the training region, as well as to perform direct symbolic regression without using additional tools such as SINDy.