Title
Explaining Deep Learning Models Through Rule-Based Approximation and Visualization
Abstract
This article describes a novel approach to the problem of developing explainable machine learning models. We consider a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) model representing a highway path planning policy for autonomous highway driving [1]. The model constitutes a mapping from the continuous multidimensional state space characterizing vehicle positions and velocities to a discrete set of actions in longitudinal and lateral direction. It is obtained by applying a customized version of the double deep Q-network learning algorithm [2]. The main idea is to approximate the DRL model with a set of IF-THEN rules that provide an alternative interpretable model, which is further enhanced by visualizing the rules. This concept is rationalized by the universal approximation properties of the rule-based models with fuzzy predicates. The proposed approach includes a learning engine composed of zero-order fuzzy rules, which generalize locally around the prototypes by using multivariate function models. The adjacent (in the data space) prototypes, which correspond to the same action, are further grouped and merged into the so-called MegaClouds reducing significantly the number of fuzzy rules. The input selection method is based on ranking the density of the individual inputs. Experimental results show that the specific DRL agent can be interpreted by approximating with families of rules of different granularity. The method is computationally efficient and can be potentially extended to addressing the explainability of the broader set of fully connected deep neural network models.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1109/TFUZZ.2020.2999776
IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Autonomous driving,deep reinforcement learning,density-based input selection,explainable artificial intelligence,prototype- and density-based models,rule-based models
Journal
29
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
8
1063-6706
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.36
13
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Eduardo Almeida Soares110.36
Plamen Angelov295467.44
Bruno Costa3367.51
Marcos Castro410.70
Subramanya P. Nageshrao5454.95
Dimitar Filev61249147.45