How to concatenate two layers in keras?

Question

I have an example of a neural network with two layers. The first layer takes two arguments and has one output. The second should take one argument as result of the first layer and one additional argument. It should looks like this:

x1  x2  x3
 \  /   /
  y1   /
   \  /
    y2

So, I'd created a model with two layers and tried to merge them but it returns an error: The first layer in a Sequential model must get an "input_shape" or "batch_input_shape" argument. on the line result.add(merged).

Model:

first = Sequential()
first.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(2,), activation='sigmoid'))

second = Sequential()
second.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(1,), activation='sigmoid'))

result = Sequential()
merged = Concatenate([first, second])
ada_grad = Adagrad(lr=0.1, epsilon=1e-08, decay=0.0)
result.add(merged)
result.compile(optimizer=ada_grad, loss=_loss_tensor, metrics=['accuracy'])

Answer 1

You're getting the error because result defined as Sequential() is just a container for the model and you have not defined an input for it.

Given what you're trying to build set result to take the third input x3.

first = Sequential()
first.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(2,), activation='sigmoid'))

second = Sequential()
second.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(1,), activation='sigmoid'))

third = Sequential()
# of course you must provide the input to result which will be your x3
third.add(Dense(1, input_shape=(1,), activation='sigmoid'))

# lets say you add a few more layers to first and second.
# concatenate them
merged = Concatenate([first, second])

# then concatenate the two outputs

result = Concatenate([merged,  third])

ada_grad = Adagrad(lr=0.1, epsilon=1e-08, decay=0.0)

result.compile(optimizer=ada_grad, loss='binary_crossentropy',
               metrics=['accuracy'])

However, my preferred way of building a model that has this type of input structure would be to use the functional api.

Here is an implementation of your requirements to get you started:

from keras.models import Model
from keras.layers import Concatenate, Dense, LSTM, Input, concatenate
from keras.optimizers import Adagrad

first_input = Input(shape=(2, ))
first_dense = Dense(1, )(first_input)

second_input = Input(shape=(2, ))
second_dense = Dense(1, )(second_input)

merge_one = concatenate([first_dense, second_dense])

third_input = Input(shape=(1, ))
merge_two = concatenate([merge_one, third_input])

model = Model(inputs=[first_input, second_input, third_input], outputs=merge_two)
ada_grad = Adagrad(lr=0.1, epsilon=1e-08, decay=0.0)
model.compile(optimizer=ada_grad, loss='binary_crossentropy',
               metrics=['accuracy'])

To answer the question in the comments:

1. How are result and merged connected? Assuming you mean how are they concatenated.

Concatenation works like this:

  a        b         c
a b c   g h i    a b c g h i
d e f   j k l    d e f j k l

i.e rows are just joined.

2. Now, x1 is input to first, x2 is input into second and x3 input into third.

Answer 2

Adding to the above-accepted answer so that it helps those who are using tensorflow 2.0

import tensorflow as tf

# some data
c1 = tf.constant([[1, 1, 1], [2, 2, 2]], dtype=tf.float32)
c2 = tf.constant([[2, 2, 2], [3, 3, 3]], dtype=tf.float32)
c3 = tf.constant([[3, 3, 3], [4, 4, 4]], dtype=tf.float32)

# bake layers x1, x2, x3
x1 = tf.keras.layers.Dense(10)(c1)
x2 = tf.keras.layers.Dense(10)(c2)
x3 = tf.keras.layers.Dense(10)(c3)

# merged layer y1
y1 = tf.keras.layers.Concatenate(axis=1)([x1, x2])

# merged layer y2
y2 = tf.keras.layers.Concatenate(axis=1)([y1, x3])

# print info
print("-"*30)
print("x1", x1.shape, "x2", x2.shape, "x3", x3.shape)
print("y1", y1.shape)
print("y2", y2.shape)
print("-"*30)

Result:

------------------------------
x1 (2, 10) x2 (2, 10) x3 (2, 10)
y1 (2, 20)
y2 (2, 30)
------------------------------

Answer 3

You can experiment with model.summary() (notice the concatenate_XX (Concatenate) layer size)

# merge samples, two input must be same shape
inp1 = Input(shape=(10,32))
inp2 = Input(shape=(10,32))
cc1 = concatenate([inp1, inp2],axis=0) # Merge data must same row column
output = Dense(30, activation='relu')(cc1)
model = Model(inputs=[inp1, inp2], outputs=output)
model.summary()

# merge row must same column size
inp1 = Input(shape=(20,10))
inp2 = Input(shape=(32,10))
cc1 = concatenate([inp1, inp2],axis=1)
output = Dense(30, activation='relu')(cc1)
model = Model(inputs=[inp1, inp2], outputs=output)
model.summary()

# merge column must same row size
inp1 = Input(shape=(10,20))
inp2 = Input(shape=(10,32))
cc1 = concatenate([inp1, inp2],axis=1)
output = Dense(30, activation='relu')(cc1)
model = Model(inputs=[inp1, inp2], outputs=output)
model.summary()

You can view notebook here for detail: https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/anhhh11/DeepLearning/blob/master/Concanate_two_layer_keras.ipynb