Back to the Future: Reversible Runtime Neural Network Pruning for Safe Autonomous Systems

Neural network pruning has emerged as a technique to reduce the size of networks at the cost of accuracy to enable deployment in resource-constrained systems. However, low-accuracy pruned models may compromise the safety of realtime autonomous systems when encountering unpredictable scenarios, e.g., due to anomalous or emergent behavior. We propose Back to the Future: a novel approach that combines pruning with dynamic routing to achieve both latency gains and dynamic reconfiguration to meet desired accuracy at runtime. Our approach enables the pruned model to quickly revert to the full model when unsafe behavior is detected, enhancing safety and reliability. Experimental results demonstrate that our swapping approach is 32× faster than loading the original model from disk, providing seamless reversion to the accurate version of the model, demonstrating its applicability for safe autonomous systems design.