P1-KAN: an effective Kolmogorov-Arnold network with application to hydraulic valley optimization

arXiv stat.ML / 5/5/2026

💬 OpinionSignals & Early TrendsIdeas & Deep AnalysisModels & Research

Key Points

  • The article proposes P1-KAN, a new Kolmogorov-Arnold network designed to approximate potentially irregular, high-dimensional functions.
  • It establishes approximation error bounds under sufficient smoothness of the Kolmogorov-Arnold expansion functions, and provides universal approximation results for the case where the target function is only continuous.
  • Experimental or comparative results indicate that P1-KAN outperforms multilayer perceptrons in both accuracy and convergence speed, especially for irregular functions.
  • The paper benchmarks P1-KAN against other KAN variants, showing it beats other proposed KAN networks on irregular functions and reaches accuracy comparable to the original spline-based KAN on smooth functions.
  • As an application, it uses the proposed KAN variants to optimize a hydraulic valley problem, with comparisons among network choices reported for that task.

Abstract

A new Kolmogorov-Arnold network (KAN) is proposed to approximate potentially irregular functions in high dimensions. We provide error bounds for this approximation, assuming that the Kolmogorov-Arnold expansion functions are sufficiently smooth. When the function is only continuous, we also provide universal approximation theorems. We show that it outperforms multilayer perceptrons in terms of accuracy and convergence speed. We also compare it with several proposed KAN networks: it outperforms all networks for irregular functions and achieves similar accuracy to the original spline-based KAN network for smooth functions. Finally, we compare some of the KAN networks in optimizing a French hydraulic valley.