We propose an effective way to create interpretable control agents, by re-purposing the function of a biological neural circuit model, to govern simulated and real world reinforcement learning (RL) test-beds. We model the tap-withdrawal (TW) neural circuit of the nematode, C. elegans, a circuit responsible for the worm's reflexive response to external mechanical touch stimulations, and learn its synaptic and neuronal parameters as a policy for controlling basic RL tasks. We also autonomously park a real rover robot on a pre-defined trajectory, by deploying such neuronal circuit policies learned in a simulated environment. For reconfiguration of the purpose of the TW neural circuit, we adopt a search-based RL algorithm. We show that our neuronal policies perform as good as deep neural network policies with the advantage of realizing interpretable dynamics at the cell level.
@article{arxiv.1803.08554,
title = {Neuronal Circuit Policies},
author = {Mathias Lechner and Ramin M. Hasani and Radu Grosu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.08554},
year = {2018}
}