Book Image

Hands-On Q-Learning with Python

By : Nazia Habib
Book Image

Hands-On Q-Learning with Python

By: Nazia Habib

Overview of this book

Q-learning is a machine learning algorithm used to solve optimization problems in artificial intelligence (AI). It is one of the most popular fields of study among AI researchers. This book starts off by introducing you to reinforcement learning and Q-learning, in addition to helping you become familiar with OpenAI Gym as well as libraries such as Keras and TensorFlow. A few chapters into the book, you will gain insights into model-free Q-learning and use deep Q-networks and double deep Q-networks to solve complex problems. This book will guide you in exploring use cases such as self-driving vehicles and OpenAI Gym’s CartPole problem. You will also learn how to tune and optimize Q-networks and their hyperparameters. As you progress, you will understand the reinforcement learning approach to solving real-world problems. You will also explore how to use Q-learning and related algorithms in scientific research. Toward the end, you’ll gain insight into what’s in store for reinforcement learning. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the skills you need to solve reinforcement learning problems using Q-learning algorithms with OpenAI Gym, Keras, and TensorFlow.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Q-Learning: A Roadmap
6
Section 2: Building and Optimizing Q-Learning Agents
9
Section 3: Advanced Q-Learning Challenges with Keras, TensorFlow, and OpenAI Gym

Building a DQN to solve the CartPole problem

In this section, we'll build a deep Q-network using Keras and TensorFlow to solve the CartPole task.

As mentioned in the last chapter, many people incorrectly generalize the term deep Q-network to include any Q-learning implementation that uses a neural network. The main distinction between regular neural networks and deep learning is that deep learning structures contain many hierarchical neural network layers constructed into various architectures.

We discussed in the last chapter how to build a single-layer Q-network using TensorFlow at the level of individual layer architecture. Keras allows us to abstract much of the layer-level architecture control that TensorFlow provides. For this reason, we can treat the layer-level mathematical workings of the DQN as a black box at this point.

Refer to the previous chapter for a primer...