Neural networks merging

The MergingNetwork module is a torch Module that permit to assemble several NeuralNetwork instances into a single NeuralNetwork. It is useful to manipulate easily a model composed of different submodel dedicated to different outputs but that use the same inputs.

import os
import sys

sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.path.abspath(""), ".."))

import numpy as np
from torch import nn

from nnbma.networks import FullyConnected, MergingNetwork

Introductive example

We assume that we want to approximate a function of the following form:

\[\begin{split}f: \left( \begin{array}{c} x_1\\ x_2 \end{array} \right) \longmapsto \left( \begin{array}{c} y_1\\ y_2\\ y_3 \end{array} \right)\end{split}\]

For some reasons, for instance the observation that the calculation of \(y_1\) and \(y_2\) are closely related, we chose to approximate \(f\) using two separate networks:

\[\begin{split}\hat{f}_{1,2}: \left( \begin{array}{c} x_1\\ x_2 \end{array} \right) \longmapsto \left( \begin{array}{c} y_1\\ y_2 \end{array} \right)\end{split}\]

\[\begin{split}\hat{f}_{3}: \left( \begin{array}{c} x_1\\ x_2 \end{array} \right) \longmapsto \left( \begin{array}{c} y_3 \end{array} \right)\end{split}\]

We then have \(\hat{f} = [\hat{f}_{1,2},\,\hat{f}_{3}]\).

# Example of input
x = np.random.normal(0, 1, size=(2)).astype("float32")

net12 = FullyConnected(
    [2, 20, 20, 2],
    nn.ELU(),
).float()
print(net12(x))

net3 = FullyConnected(
    [2, 20, 20, 1],
    nn.ELU(),
).float()
print(net3(x))

[-0.00926993 -0.12510036]
[-0.2119943]

Instead of handling each network separately, we can create a network comprising both:

net = MergingNetwork(
    [net12, net3],
).float()
print(net(x))

[-0.00926993 -0.12510036 -0.2119943 ]

This architecture also handle: - the merging of more than two networks - the case where the outputs of the subnetworks are not contiguous - the case where the outputs have names

An example of a more complex case is given as example in the next section.

Advanced example

We suppose that we want to train a model that learn an estimation of the temperature in some European cities in function of two parameters.

• the number of the day in the year \(n_{day}\)

• the average temperature in Europe \(T_{avg}\)

• the average atmospheric pressure in Europe \(P_{avg}\)

The cities are the following (sorted alphabetically): Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Stockholm, Vienna

Because of the distance between some cities, we decide to train a dedicated model for each region because we assume that it will be some redundancy.

The regions are the following:

• Western Europe: Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam

• Central Europe: Berlin, Vienna, Prague

• South-western Europe: Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon

• Northern Europe: Oslo, Stockholm

variables_names = ["d", "T", "P"]
cities_names = [
    "Amsterdam",
    "Barcelona",
    "Berlin",
    "Brussels",
    "Lisbon",
    "London",
    "Madrid",
    "Oslo",
    "Paris",
    "Prague",
    "Stockholm",
    "Vienna",
]

western = ["Paris", "London", "Brussels", "Amsterdam"]
central = ["Berlin", "Vienna", "Prague"]
southwestern = ["Madrid", "Barcelona", "Lisbon"]
northern = ["Oslo", "Stockholm"]

You can create a MergingNetwork just by concatenating the subnetworks:

layers_size = [3, 50, 50]
activation = nn.ReLU()

subnetworks = [
    FullyConnected(
        layers_size + [len(western)],
        activation,
        inputs_names=variables_names,
        outputs_names=western,
    ),
    FullyConnected(
        layers_size + [len(central)],
        activation,
        inputs_names=variables_names,
        outputs_names=central,
    ),
    FullyConnected(
        layers_size + [len(southwestern)],
        activation,
        inputs_names=variables_names,
        outputs_names=southwestern,
    ),
    FullyConnected(
        layers_size + [len(northern)],
        activation,
        inputs_names=variables_names,
        outputs_names=northern,
    ),
]
network = MergingNetwork(
    subnetworks,
    inputs_names=variables_names,
)

By default, the order of the outputs is defined with the order of the subnetworks.

print("Number of outputs:", network.output_features)
print("Outputs names:", network.outputs_names)

Number of outputs: 12
Outputs names: ['Paris', 'London', 'Brussels', 'Amsterdam', 'Berlin', 'Vienna', 'Prague', 'Madrid', 'Barcelona', 'Lisbon', 'Oslo', 'Stockholm']

If you want to impose a proper output orders, you can impose the output names of the MergingNetwork. These name must exaclty match the concatenation of the output names of all the subnetwork.

network = MergingNetwork(
    subnetworks,
    inputs_names=variables_names,
    outputs_names=cities_names,
)

print("Number of outputs:", network.output_features)
print("Outputs names:", network.outputs_names)

Number of outputs: 12
Outputs names: ['Amsterdam', 'Barcelona', 'Berlin', 'Brussels', 'Lisbon', 'London', 'Madrid', 'Oslo', 'Paris', 'Prague', 'Stockholm', 'Vienna']