Book Image

Python Reinforcement Learning

By : Sudharsan Ravichandiran, Sean Saito, Rajalingappaa Shanmugamani, Yang Wenzhuo
Book Image

Python Reinforcement Learning

By: Sudharsan Ravichandiran, Sean Saito, Rajalingappaa Shanmugamani, Yang Wenzhuo

Overview of this book

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the trending and most promising branch of artificial intelligence. This Learning Path will help you master not only the basic reinforcement learning algorithms but also the advanced deep reinforcement learning algorithms. The Learning Path starts with an introduction to RL followed by OpenAI Gym, and TensorFlow. You will then explore various RL algorithms, such as Markov Decision Process, Monte Carlo methods, and dynamic programming, including value and policy iteration. You'll also work on various datasets including image, text, and video. This example-rich guide will introduce you to deep RL algorithms, such as Dueling DQN, DRQN, A3C, PPO, and TRPO. You will gain experience in several domains, including gaming, image processing, and physical simulations. You'll explore TensorFlow and OpenAI Gym to implement algorithms that also predict stock prices, generate natural language, and even build other neural networks. You will also learn about imagination-augmented agents, learning from human preference, DQfD, HER, and many of the recent advancements in RL. By the end of the Learning Path, you will have all the knowledge and experience needed to implement RL and deep RL in your projects, and you enter the world of artificial intelligence to solve various real-life problems. This Learning Path includes content from the following Packt products: • Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python by Sudharsan Ravichandiran • Python Reinforcement Learning Projects by Sean Saito, Yang Wenzhuo, and Rajalingappaa Shanmugamani
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Title Page
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Chapter 14. Building Virtual Worlds in Minecraft

In the two previous  chapters, we discussed the deep Q-learning (DQN) algorithm for playing Atari games and the Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) algorithm for continuous control tasks. We saw the big success of these algorithms in solving complex problems when compared to traditional reinforcement learning algorithms without the use of deep neural networks to approximate the value function or the policy function. Their main disadvantage, especially for DQN, is that the training step converges too slowly, for example, training an agent to play Atari games takes about one week. For more complex games, even one week's training is insufficient.

This chapter will introduce a more complicated example, Minecraft, which is a popular online video game created by Swedish game developer Markus Persson and later developed by Mojang. You will learn how to launch a Minecraft environment using OpenAI Gym and play different missions. In order to build...