Book Image

Learn Unity ML-Agents ??? Fundamentals of Unity Machine Learning

Book Image

Learn Unity ML-Agents ??? Fundamentals of Unity Machine Learning

Overview of this book

Unity Machine Learning agents allow researchers and developers to create games and simulations using the Unity Editor, which serves as an environment where intelligent agents can be trained with machine learning methods through a simple-to-use Python API. This book takes you from the basics of Reinforcement and Q Learning to building Deep Recurrent Q-Network agents that cooperate or compete in a multi-agent ecosystem. You will start with the basics of Reinforcement Learning and how to apply it to problems. Then you will learn how to build self-learning advanced neural networks with Python and Keras/TensorFlow. From there you move o n to more advanced training scenarios where you will learn further innovative ways to train your network with A3C, imitation, and curriculum learning models. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to build more complex environments by building a cooperative and competitive multi-agent ecosystem.
Table of Contents (8 chapters)

Neural network foundations

Neural networks provide the foundations for some of the most impressive AI/ML algorithms that we have seen in recent years. They have also become the cornerstone or standard for several areas of AI, from image and speech recognition to playing Atari games. This sounds really intimidating, but actually, a neural network is a quite a simple and elegant structure modeled after our own human brain. The foundation of our brain and nervous system is a single neuron, shown in the following image beside a simulated computer neuron:



A neuron

The simulated neuron in the preceding diagram represents the structure of a single neuron. The inputs, or signals, into the neuron are typically summed and then evaluated against some form of activation function. You can see an example activation function in the diagram. When a neuron is activated, or fired, it sends out...