A Low Latency Adaptive Coding Spike Framework for Deep Reinforcement Learning

A Low Latency Adaptive Coding Spike Framework for Deep Reinforcement Learning

Lang Qin, Rui Yan, Huajin Tang

Proceedings of the Thirty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main Track. Pages 3049-3057. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2023/340

In recent years, spiking neural networks (SNNs) have been used in reinforcement learning (RL) due to their low power consumption and event-driven features. However, spiking reinforcement learning (SRL), which suffers from fixed coding methods, still faces the problems of high latency and poor versatility. In this paper, we use learnable matrix multiplication to encode and decode spikes, improving the flexibility of the coders and thus reducing latency. Meanwhile, we train the SNNs using the direct training method and use two different structures for online and offline RL algorithms, which gives our model a wider range of applications. Extensive experiments have revealed that our method achieves optimal performance with ultra-low latency (as low as 0.8% of other SRL methods) and excellent energy efficiency (up to 5X the DNNs) in different algorithms and different environments.
Keywords:
Humans and AI: HAI: Cognitive modeling
Machine Learning: ML: Deep reinforcement learning
Robotics: ROB: Cognitive robotics