Clarification on a Neural Net that plays Snake

Solution 1:

In this post, I will advise you of:

• How to map navigational instructions to action sequences with an LSTM neural network
• Resources that will help you learn how to use neural networks to accomplish your task
• How to install and configure neural network libraries based on what I needed to learn the hard way

General opinion of your idea:

I can see what you're trying to do, and I believe that your game idea (of using randomly generated identities of adversaries that control their behavior in a way that randomly alters the way they're using artificial intelligence to behave intelligently) has a lot of potential.

Mapping navigational instructions to action sequences with a neural network

For processing your game board, because it involves dense (as opposed to sparse) data, you could find a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to be useful. However, because you need to translate the map to an action sequence, sequence-optimized neural networks (such as Recurrent Neural Networks) will likely be the most useful for you. I did find some studies that use neural networks to map navigational instructions to action sequences, construct the game map, and move a character through a game with many types of inputs:

• Mei, H., Bansal, M., & Walter, M. R. (2015). Listen, attend, and walk: Neural mapping of navigational instructions to action sequences. arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.04089. Available at: Listen, Attend, and Walk: Neural Mapping of Navigational Instructions to Action Sequences
• Lample, G., & Chaplot, D. S. (2016). Playing FPS games with deep reinforcement learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.05521. Available at: Super Mario as a String: Platformer Level Generation Via LSTMs
• Lample, G., & Chaplot, D. S. (2016). Playing FPS games with deep reinforcement learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.05521. Available at: Playing FPS Games with Deep Reinforcement Learning
• Schulz, R., Talbot, B., Lam, O., Dayoub, F., Corke, P., Upcroft, B., & Wyeth, G. (2015, May). Robot navigation using human cues: A robot navigation system for symbolic goal-directed exploration. In Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 1100-1105). IEEE. Available at: Robot Navigation Using Human Cues: A robot navigation system for symbolic goal-directed exploration

General opinion of what will help you

It sounds like you're missing some basic understanding of how neural networks work, so my primary recommendation to you is to study more of the underlying mechanics behind neural networks in general. It's important to keep in mind that a neural network is a type of machine learning model. So, it doesn't really make sense to just construct a neural network with random parameters. A neural network is a machine learning model that is trained from sample data, and once it is trained, it can be evaluated on test data (e.g. to perform predictions).

The root of machine learning is largely influenced by Bayesian statistics, so you might benefit from getting a textbook on Bayesian statistics to gain a deeper understanding of how machine-based classification works in general.

It will also be valuable for you to learn the differences between different types of neural networks, such as Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs).

If you want to tinker with how neural networks can be used for classification tasks, try this:

• Tensorflow Playground

To learn the math: My professional opinion is that learning the underlying math of neural networks is very important. If it's intimidating, I give you my testimony that I was able to learn all of it on my own. But if you prefer learning in a classroom environment, then I recommend that you try that. A great resource and textbook for learning the mechanics and mathematics of neural networks is:

• Neural Networks and Deep Learning

Tutorials for neural network libraries

I recommend that you try working through the tutorials for a neural network library, such as:

• TensorFlow tutorials
• Deep Learning tutorials with Theano
• CNTK tutorials (CNTK 205: Artistic Style Transfer is particularly cool.)
• Keras tutorial (Keras is a powerful high-level neural network library that can use either TensorFlow or Theano.)

Solution 2:

I saw similar application. Inputs usually were snake coordinates, apple coordinates and some sensory data(is wall next to snake head or no in your case).

Using genetic algorithm is a good idea in this case. You doing only parametric learning(finding set of weights), but structure will be based on your estimation. GA can be also used for structure learning(finding topology of ANN). But using GA for both will be very computational hard.

Professor Floreano did something similar. He use GA for finding weights for neural network controller of robot. Robot was in labyrinth and perform some task. Neural network hidden layer was one neuron with recurrent joints on inputs and one lateral connection on himself. There was two outputs. Outputs were connected on input layer and hidden layer(mentioned one neuron).

But Floreano did something more interesting. He say, We don't born with determined synapses, our synapses change in our lifetime. So he use GA for finding rules for change of synapses. These rules was based on Hebbian learning. He perform node encoding(for all weights connected to neuron will apply same rule). On beginning, he initialized weights on small random values. Finding rules instead of numerical value of synapse leads to better results. One from Floreno's articles.

And on the and my own experience. In last semester I and my schoolmate get a task finding the rules for synapse with GA but for Spiking neural network. Our SNN was controller for kinematic model of mobile robot and task was lead robot in to the chosen point. We obtained some results but not expected. You can see results here. So I recommend you use "ordinary" ANN instead off SNN because SNN brings new phenomens.