Concatenation of Keras parallel layers changes wanted target shape - python-3.x

Question

I'm a bit new to Keras and deep learning. I'm currently trying to replicate this paper but when I'm compiling the first model (without the LSTMs) I get the following error:
"ValueError: Error when checking target: expected dense_3 to have shape (None, 120, 40) but got array with shape (8, 40, 1)"
The description of the model is this:
Input (length T is appliance specific window size)
Parallel 1D convolution with filter size 3, 5, and 7
respectively, stride=1, number of filters=32,
activation type=linear, border mode=same
Merge layer which concatenates the output of
parallel 1D convolutions
Dense layer, output_dim=128, activation type=ReLU
Dense layer, output_dim=128, activation type=ReLU
Dense layer, output_dim=T , activation type=linear
My code is this:
from keras import layers, Input
from keras.models import Model
# the window sizes (seq_length?) are 40, 1075, 465, 72 and 1246 for the kettle, dish washer,
# fridge, microwave, oven and washing machine, respectively.
def ae_net(T):
input_layer = Input(shape= (T,))
branch_a = layers.Conv1D(32, 3, activation= 'linear', padding='same', strides=1)(input_layer)
branch_b = layers.Conv1D(32, 5, activation= 'linear', padding='same', strides=1)(input_layer)
branch_c = layers.Conv1D(32, 7, activation= 'linear', padding='same', strides=1)(input_layer)
merge_layer = layers.concatenate([branch_a, branch_b, branch_c], axis=1)
dense_1 = layers.Dense(128, activation='relu')(merge_layer)
dense_2 =layers.Dense(128, activation='relu')(dense_1)
output_dense = layers.Dense(T, activation='linear')(dense_2)
model = Model(input_layer, output_dense)
return model
model = ae_net(40)
model.compile(loss= 'mean_absolute_error', optimizer='rmsprop')
model.fit(X, y, batch_size= 8)
where X and y are numpy arrays of 8 sequences of a length of 40 values. So X.shape and y.shape are (8, 40, 1). It's actually one batch of data. The thing is I cannot understand how the output would be of shape (None, 120, 40) and what these sizes would mean.

Answer 1

As you noted, your shapes contain batch_size, length and channels: (8,40,1)
Your three convolutions are, each one, creating a tensor like (8,40,32).
Your concatenation in the axis=1 creates a tensor like (8,120,32), where 120 = 3*40.
Now, the dense layers only work on the last dimension (the channels in this case), leaving the length (now 120) untouched.
Solution
Now, it seems you do want to keep the length at the end. So you won't need any flatten or reshape layers. But you will need to keep the length 40, though.
You're probably doing the concatenation in the wrong axis. Instead of the length axis (1), you should concatenate in the channels axis (2 or -1).
So, this should be your concatenate layer:
merge_layer = layers.Concatenate()([branch_a, branch_b, branch_c])
#or layers.Concatenate(axis=-1)([branch_a, branch_b, branch_c])
This will output (8, 40, 96), and the dense layers will transform the 96 in something else.