Book Image

Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python

By : Sudharsan Ravichandiran
Book Image

Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python

By: Sudharsan Ravichandiran

Overview of this book

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the trending and most promising branch of artificial intelligence. Hands-On Reinforcement learning with Python will help you master not only the basic reinforcement learning algorithms but also the advanced deep reinforcement learning algorithms. The book starts with an introduction to Reinforcement Learning followed by OpenAI Gym, and TensorFlow. You will then explore various RL algorithms and concepts, such as Markov Decision Process, Monte Carlo methods, and dynamic programming, including value and policy iteration. This example-rich guide will introduce you to deep reinforcement learning algorithms, such as Dueling DQN, DRQN, A3C, PPO, and TRPO. You will also learn about imagination-augmented agents, learning from human preference, DQfD, HER, and many more of the recent advancements in reinforcement learning. By the end of the book, you will have all the knowledge and experience needed to implement reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning in your projects, and you will be all set to enter the world of artificial intelligence.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

TD control

In TD prediction, we estimated the value function. In TD control, we optimize the value function. For TD control, we use two kinds of control algorithm:

  • Off-policy learning algorithm: Q learning
  • On-policy learning algorithm: SARSA

Q learning

We will now look into the very popular off-policy TD control algorithm called Q learning. Q learning is a very simple and widely used TD algorithm. In control algorithms, we don't care about state value; here, in Q learning, our concern is the state-action value pair—the effect of performing an action A in the state S.

We will update the Q value based on the following equation:

The preceding equation is similar to the TD prediction update rule with a little difference...