Whenever I made plots for my work on neural networks, they were always flat and boring. Then, a few weeks ago, I had an idea for visualizing a neural network “thinking” through a problem as it was solving it. Using my work on artificial intelligence to control interplanetary trajectories, I created up the following gif.

What Is It?

In the gif, you can see the neural network to the left and the spacecraft trajectory on the right. The neural network is controlling the spacecraft’s thrust and direction through the trajectory. As the spacecraft travels its current state is fed into the neural network and we can see the different neurons activate different amounts by the colors they turn. In essence, we’re seeing the neural network “thinking”. Now, while this does look pretty, it doesn’t really give us much insight into how the network actually works or what signals it’s using to determine the control. Neural network explainability is still an active research topic, but if you want a free introduction to how a Neural network works I’ve heard this is a good book.

A higer quality version of this GIF has been uploaded onto YouTube here:

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