On Learning and Learned Representation with Dynamic Routing in Capsule Networks.

Capsule Networks (CapsNet) are recently proposed multi-stage computational models specialized for entity representation and discovery in image data. CapsNet employs iterative routing that shapes how the information cascades through different levels of interpretations. In this work, we investigate i) how the routing affects the CapsNet model fitting, ii) how the representation by capsules helps discover global structures in data distribution and iii) how learned data representation adapts and generalizes to new tasks. Our investigation shows: i) routing operation determines the certainty with which one layer of capsules pass information to the layer above, and the appropriate level of certainty is related to the model fitness, ii) in a designed experiment using data with a known 2D structure, capsule representations allow more meaningful 2D manifold embedding than neurons in a standard CNN do and iii) compared to neurons of standard CNN, capsules of successive layers are less coupled and more adaptive to new data distribution.