31,664 research outputs found
A Novel Predictive-Coding-Inspired Variational RNN Model for Online Prediction and Recognition
This study introduces PV-RNN, a novel variational RNN inspired by the
predictive-coding ideas. The model learns to extract the probabilistic
structures hidden in fluctuating temporal patterns by dynamically changing the
stochasticity of its latent states. Its architecture attempts to address two
major concerns of variational Bayes RNNs: how can latent variables learn
meaningful representations and how can the inference model transfer future
observations to the latent variables. PV-RNN does both by introducing adaptive
vectors mirroring the training data, whose values can then be adapted
differently during evaluation. Moreover, prediction errors during
backpropagation, rather than external inputs during the forward computation,
are used to convey information to the network about the external data. For
testing, we introduce error regression for predicting unseen sequences as
inspired by predictive coding that leverages those mechanisms. The model
introduces a weighting parameter, the meta-prior, to balance the optimization
pressure placed on two terms of a lower bound on the marginal likelihood of the
sequential data. We test the model on two datasets with probabilistic
structures and show that with high values of the meta-prior the network
develops deterministic chaos through which the data's randomness is imitated.
For low values, the model behaves as a random process. The network performs
best on intermediate values, and is able to capture the latent probabilistic
structure with good generalization. Analyzing the meta-prior's impact on the
network allows to precisely study the theoretical value and practical benefits
of incorporating stochastic dynamics in our model. We demonstrate better
prediction performance on a robot imitation task with our model using error
regression compared to a standard variational Bayes model lacking such a
procedure.Comment: The paper is accepted in Neural Computatio
Intrinsic Motivation and Mental Replay enable Efficient Online Adaptation in Stochastic Recurrent Networks
Autonomous robots need to interact with unknown, unstructured and changing
environments, constantly facing novel challenges. Therefore, continuous online
adaptation for lifelong-learning and the need of sample-efficient mechanisms to
adapt to changes in the environment, the constraints, the tasks, or the robot
itself are crucial. In this work, we propose a novel framework for
probabilistic online motion planning with online adaptation based on a
bio-inspired stochastic recurrent neural network. By using learning signals
which mimic the intrinsic motivation signalcognitive dissonance in addition
with a mental replay strategy to intensify experiences, the stochastic
recurrent network can learn from few physical interactions and adapts to novel
environments in seconds. We evaluate our online planning and adaptation
framework on an anthropomorphic KUKA LWR arm. The rapid online adaptation is
shown by learning unknown workspace constraints sample-efficiently from few
physical interactions while following given way points.Comment: accepted in Neural Network
Goal-Directed Planning for Habituated Agents by Active Inference Using a Variational Recurrent Neural Network
It is crucial to ask how agents can achieve goals by generating action plans
using only partial models of the world acquired through habituated
sensory-motor experiences. Although many existing robotics studies use a
forward model framework, there are generalization issues with high degrees of
freedom. The current study shows that the predictive coding (PC) and active
inference (AIF) frameworks, which employ a generative model, can develop better
generalization by learning a prior distribution in a low dimensional latent
state space representing probabilistic structures extracted from well
habituated sensory-motor trajectories. In our proposed model, learning is
carried out by inferring optimal latent variables as well as synaptic weights
for maximizing the evidence lower bound, while goal-directed planning is
accomplished by inferring latent variables for maximizing the estimated lower
bound. Our proposed model was evaluated with both simple and complex robotic
tasks in simulation, which demonstrated sufficient generalization in learning
with limited training data by setting an intermediate value for a
regularization coefficient. Furthermore, comparative simulation results show
that the proposed model outperforms a conventional forward model in
goal-directed planning, due to the learned prior confining the search of motor
plans within the range of habituated trajectories.Comment: 30 pages, 19 figure
Noise suppressing sensor encoding and neural signal orthonormalization
In this paper we regard first the situation where parallel channels are disturbed by noise. With the goal of maximal information conservation we deduce the conditions for a transform which "immunizes" the channels against noise influence before the signals are used in later operations. It shows up that the signals have to be decorrelated and normalized by the filter which corresponds for the case of one channel to the classical result of Shannon. Additional simulations for image encoding and decoding show that this constitutes an efficient approach for noise suppression. Furthermore, by a corresponding objective function we deduce the stochastic and deterministic learning rules for a neural network that implements the data orthonormalization. In comparison with other already existing normalization networks our network shows approximately the same in the stochastic case but, by its generic deduction ensures the convergence and enables the use as independent building block in other contexts, e.g. whitening for independent component analysis. Keywords: information conservation, whitening filter, data orthonormalization network, image encoding, noise suppression
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