Book Image

Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Python

By : Andrea Lonza
Book Image

Reinforcement Learning Algorithms with Python

By: Andrea Lonza

Overview of this book

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a popular and promising branch of AI that involves making smarter models and agents that can automatically determine ideal behavior based on changing requirements. This book will help you master RL algorithms and understand their implementation as you build self-learning agents. Starting with an introduction to the tools, libraries, and setup needed to work in the RL environment, this book covers the building blocks of RL and delves into value-based methods, such as the application of Q-learning and SARSA algorithms. You'll learn how to use a combination of Q-learning and neural networks to solve complex problems. Furthermore, you'll study the policy gradient methods, TRPO, and PPO, to improve performance and stability, before moving on to the DDPG and TD3 deterministic algorithms. This book also covers how imitation learning techniques work and how Dagger can teach an agent to drive. You'll discover evolutionary strategies and black-box optimization techniques, and see how they can improve RL algorithms. Finally, you'll get to grips with exploration approaches, such as UCB and UCB1, and develop a meta-algorithm called ESBAS. By the end of the book, you'll have worked with key RL algorithms to overcome challenges in real-world applications, and be part of the RL research community.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Algorithms and Environments
5
Section 2: Model-Free RL Algorithms
11
Section 3: Beyond Model-Free Algorithms and Improvements
17
Assessments

OpenAI Gym and RL cycles

Since RL requires an agent and an environment to interact with each other, the first example that may spring to mind is the earth, the physical world we live in. Unfortunately, for now, it is actually used in only a few cases. With the current algorithms, the problems stem from the large number of interactions that an agent has to execute with the environment in order to learn good behaviors. It may require hundreds, thousands, or even millions of actions, requiring way too much time to be feasible. One solution is to use simulated environments to start the learning process and, only at the end, fine-tune it in the real world. This approach is way better than learning just from the world around it, but still requires slow real-world interactions. However, in many cases, the task can be fully simulated. To research and implement RL algorithms, games, video...