# Deep Q-learning¶

In this notebook, we'll build a neural network that can learn to play games through reinforcement learning. More specifically, we'll use Q-learning to train an agent to play a game called Cart-Pole. In this game, a freely swinging pole is attached to a cart. The cart can move to the left and right, and the goal is to keep the pole upright as long as possible.

We can simulate this game using OpenAI Gym. First, let's check out how OpenAI Gym works. Then, we'll get into training an agent to play the Cart-Pole game.

In [1]:
import gym
import tensorflow as tf
import numpy as np


Note: Make sure you have OpenAI Gym cloned into the same directory with this notebook. I've included gym as a submodule, so you can run git submodule --init --recursive to pull the contents into the gym repo.

In [150]:
# Create the Cart-Pole game environment
env = gym.make('CartPole-v0')

[2017-04-13 12:20:53,011] Making new env: CartPole-v0


We interact with the simulation through env. To show the simulation running, you can use env.render() to render one frame. Passing in an action as an integer to env.step will generate the next step in the simulation. You can see how many actions are possible from env.action_space and to get a random action you can use env.action_space.sample(). This is general to all Gym games. In the Cart-Pole game, there are two possible actions, moving the cart left or right. So there are two actions we can take, encoded as 0 and 1.

Run the code below to watch the simulation run.

In [152]:
env.reset()
rewards = []
for _ in range(100):
env.render()
state, reward, done, info = env.step(env.action_space.sample()) # take a random action
rewards.append(reward)
if done:
rewards = []
env.reset()


To shut the window showing the simulation, use env.close().

If you ran the simulation above, we can look at the rewards:

In [5]:
print(rewards[-20:])

[1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0]


The game resets after the pole has fallen past a certain angle. For each frame while the simulation is running, it returns a reward of 1.0. The longer the game runs, the more reward we get. Then, our network's goal is to maximize the reward by keeping the pole vertical. It will do this by moving the cart to the left and the right.

## Q-Network¶

We train our Q-learning agent using the Bellman Equation:

$$Q(s, a) = r + \gamma \max{Q(s', a')}$$

where $s$ is a state, $a$ is an action, and $s'$ is the next state from state $s$ and action $a$.

Before we used this equation to learn values for a Q-table. However, for this game there are a huge number of states available. The state has four values: the position and velocity of the cart, and the position and velocity of the pole. These are all real-valued numbers, so ignoring floating point precisions, you practically have infinite states. Instead of using a table then, we'll replace it with a neural network that will approximate the Q-table lookup function.

Now, our Q value, $Q(s, a)$ is calculated by passing in a state to the network. The output will be Q-values for each available action, with fully connected hidden layers.

As I showed before, we can define our targets for training as $\hat{Q}(s,a) = r + \gamma \max{Q(s', a')}$. Then we update the weights by minimizing $(\hat{Q}(s,a) - Q(s,a))^2$.

For this Cart-Pole game, we have four inputs, one for each value in the state, and two outputs, one for each action. To get $\hat{Q}$, we'll first choose an action, then simulate the game using that action. This will get us the next state, $s'$, and the reward. With that, we can calculate $\hat{Q}$ then pass it back into the $Q$ network to run the optimizer and update the weights.

Below is my implementation of the Q-network. I used two fully connected layers with ReLU activations. Two seems to be good enough, three might be better. Feel free to try it out.

In [153]:
class QNetwork:
def __init__(self, learning_rate=0.01, state_size=4,
action_size=2, hidden_size=10,
name='QNetwork'):
# state inputs to the Q-network
with tf.variable_scope(name):
self.inputs_ = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, [None, state_size], name='inputs')

# One hot encode the actions to later choose the Q-value for the action
self.actions_ = tf.placeholder(tf.int32, [None], name='actions')
one_hot_actions = tf.one_hot(self.actions_, action_size)

# Target Q values for training
self.targetQs_ = tf.placeholder(tf.float32, [None], name='target')

# ReLU hidden layers
self.fc1 = tf.contrib.layers.fully_connected(self.inputs_, hidden_size)
self.fc2 = tf.contrib.layers.fully_connected(self.fc1, hidden_size)

# Linear output layer
self.output = tf.contrib.layers.fully_connected(self.fc2, action_size,
activation_fn=None)

### Train with loss (targetQ - Q)^2
# output has length 2, for two actions. This next line chooses
# one value from output (per row) according to the one-hot encoded actions.
self.Q = tf.reduce_sum(tf.multiply(self.output, one_hot_actions), axis=1)

self.loss = tf.reduce_mean(tf.square(self.targetQs_ - self.Q))


## Experience replay¶

Reinforcement learning algorithms can have stability issues due to correlations between states. To reduce correlations when training, we can store the agent's experiences and later draw a random mini-batch of those experiences to train on.

Here, we'll create a Memory object that will store our experiences, our transitions $<s, a, r, s'>$. This memory will have a maxmium capacity, so we can keep newer experiences in memory while getting rid of older experiences. Then, we'll sample a random mini-batch of transitions $<s, a, r, s'>$ and train on those.

Below, I've implemented a Memory object. If you're unfamiliar with deque, this is a double-ended queue. You can think of it like a tube open on both sides. You can put objects in either side of the tube. But if it's full, adding anything more will push an object out the other side. This is a great data structure to use for the memory buffer.

In [3]:
from collections import deque
class Memory():
def __init__(self, max_size = 1000):
self.buffer = deque(maxlen=max_size)

self.buffer.append(experience)

def sample(self, batch_size):
idx = np.random.choice(np.arange(len(self.buffer)),
size=batch_size,
replace=False)
return [self.buffer[ii] for ii in idx]


## Exploration - Exploitation¶

To learn about the environment and rules of the game, the agent needs to explore by taking random actions. We'll do this by choosing a random action with some probability $\epsilon$ (epsilon). That is, with some probability $\epsilon$ the agent will make a random action and with probability $1 - \epsilon$, the agent will choose an action from $Q(s,a)$. This is called an $\epsilon$-greedy policy.

At first, the agent needs to do a lot of exploring. Later when it has learned more, the agent can favor choosing actions based on what it has learned. This is called exploitation. We'll set it up so the agent is more likely to explore early in training, then more likely to exploit later in training.

## Q-Learning training algorithm¶

Putting all this together, we can list out the algorithm we'll use to train the network. We'll train the network in episodes. One episode is one simulation of the game. For this game, the goal is to keep the pole upright for 195 frames. So we can start a new episode once meeting that goal. The game ends if the pole tilts over too far, or if the cart moves too far the left or right. When a game ends, we'll start a new episode. Now, to train the agent:

• Initialize the memory $D$
• Initialize the action-value network $Q$ with random weights
• For episode = 1, $M$ do
• For $t$, $T$ do
• With probability $\epsilon$ select a random action $a_t$, otherwise select $a_t = \mathrm{argmax}_a Q(s,a)$
• Execute action $a_t$ in simulator and observe reward $r_{t+1}$ and new state $s_{t+1}$
• Store transition $<s_t, a_t, r_{t+1}, s_{t+1}>$ in memory $D$
• Sample random mini-batch from $D$: $<s_j, a_j, r_j, s'_j>$
• Set $\hat{Q}_j = r_j$ if the episode ends at $j+1$, otherwise set $\hat{Q}_j = r_j + \gamma \max_{a'}{Q(s'_j, a')}$
• Make a gradient descent step with loss $(\hat{Q}_j - Q(s_j, a_j))^2$
• endfor
• endfor

## Hyperparameters¶

One of the more difficult aspects of reinforcememt learning are the large number of hyperparameters. Not only are we tuning the network, but we're tuning the simulation.

In [174]:
train_episodes = 1000          # max number of episodes to learn from
max_steps = 200                # max steps in an episode
gamma = 0.99                   # future reward discount

# Exploration parameters
explore_start = 1.0            # exploration probability at start
explore_stop = 0.01            # minimum exploration probability
decay_rate = 0.0001            # exponential decay rate for exploration prob

# Network parameters
hidden_size = 64               # number of units in each Q-network hidden layer
learning_rate = 0.0001         # Q-network learning rate

# Memory parameters
memory_size = 10000            # memory capacity
batch_size = 20                # experience mini-batch size
pretrain_length = batch_size   # number experiences to pretrain the memory

In [175]:
tf.reset_default_graph()
mainQN = QNetwork(name='main', hidden_size=hidden_size, learning_rate=learning_rate)


## Populate the experience memory¶

Here I'm re-initializing the simulation and pre-populating the memory. The agent is taking random actions and storing the transitions in memory. This will help the agent with exploring the game.

In [179]:
# Initialize the simulation
env.reset()
# Take one random step to get the pole and cart moving
state, reward, done, _ = env.step(env.action_space.sample())

memory = Memory(max_size=memory_size)

# Make a bunch of random actions and store the experiences
for ii in range(pretrain_length):
# Uncomment the line below to watch the simulation
# env.render()

# Make a random action
action = env.action_space.sample()
next_state, reward, done, _ = env.step(action)

if done:
# The simulation fails so no next state
next_state = np.zeros(state.shape)

# Start new episode
env.reset()
# Take one random step to get the pole and cart moving
state, reward, done, _ = env.step(env.action_space.sample())
else:
state = next_state


## Training¶

Below we'll train our agent. If you want to watch it train, uncomment the env.render() line. This is slow because it's rendering the frames slower than the network can train. But, it's cool to watch the agent get better at the game.

In [ ]:
# Now train with experiences
saver = tf.train.Saver()
rewards_list = []
with tf.Session() as sess:
# Initialize variables
sess.run(tf.global_variables_initializer())

step = 0
for ep in range(1, train_episodes):
total_reward = 0
t = 0
while t < max_steps:
step += 1
# Uncomment this next line to watch the training
# env.render()

# Explore or Exploit
explore_p = explore_stop + (explore_start - explore_stop)*np.exp(-decay_rate*step)
if explore_p > np.random.rand():
# Make a random action
action = env.action_space.sample()
else:
# Get action from Q-network
feed = {mainQN.inputs_: state.reshape((1, *state.shape))}
Qs = sess.run(mainQN.output, feed_dict=feed)
action = np.argmax(Qs)

# Take action, get new state and reward
next_state, reward, done, _ = env.step(action)

total_reward += reward

if done:
# the episode ends so no next state
next_state = np.zeros(state.shape)
t = max_steps

print('Episode: {}'.format(ep),
'Total reward: {}'.format(total_reward),
'Training loss: {:.4f}'.format(loss),
'Explore P: {:.4f}'.format(explore_p))
rewards_list.append((ep, total_reward))

# Start new episode
env.reset()
# Take one random step to get the pole and cart moving
state, reward, done, _ = env.step(env.action_space.sample())

else:
state = next_state
t += 1

# Sample mini-batch from memory
batch = memory.sample(batch_size)
states = np.array([each[0] for each in batch])
actions = np.array([each[1] for each in batch])
rewards = np.array([each[2] for each in batch])
next_states = np.array([each[3] for each in batch])

# Train network
target_Qs = sess.run(mainQN.output, feed_dict={mainQN.inputs_: next_states})

# Set target_Qs to 0 for states where episode ends
episode_ends = (next_states == np.zeros(states[0].shape)).all(axis=1)
target_Qs[episode_ends] = (0, 0)

targets = rewards + gamma * np.max(target_Qs, axis=1)

loss, _ = sess.run([mainQN.loss, mainQN.opt],
feed_dict={mainQN.inputs_: states,
mainQN.targetQs_: targets,
mainQN.actions_: actions})

saver.save(sess, "checkpoints/cartpole.ckpt")


## Visualizing training¶

Below I'll plot the total rewards for each episode. I'm plotting the rolling average too, in blue.

In [167]:
%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def running_mean(x, N):
cumsum = np.cumsum(np.insert(x, 0, 0))
return (cumsum[N:] - cumsum[:-N]) / N

In [181]:
eps, rews = np.array(rewards_list).T
smoothed_rews = running_mean(rews, 10)
plt.plot(eps[-len(smoothed_rews):], smoothed_rews)
plt.plot(eps, rews, color='grey', alpha=0.3)
plt.xlabel('Episode')
plt.ylabel('Total Reward')

Out[181]:
<matplotlib.text.Text at 0x125c136d8>

## Testing¶

Let's checkout how our trained agent plays the game.

In [183]:
test_episodes = 10
test_max_steps = 400
env.reset()
with tf.Session() as sess:
saver.restore(sess, tf.train.latest_checkpoint('checkpoints'))

for ep in range(1, test_episodes):
t = 0
while t < test_max_steps:
env.render()

# Get action from Q-network
feed = {mainQN.inputs_: state.reshape((1, *state.shape))}
Qs = sess.run(mainQN.output, feed_dict=feed)
action = np.argmax(Qs)

# Take action, get new state and reward
next_state, reward, done, _ = env.step(action)

if done:
t = test_max_steps
env.reset()
# Take one random step to get the pole and cart moving
state, reward, done, _ = env.step(env.action_space.sample())

else:
state = next_state
t += 1

In [184]:
env.close()


## Extending this¶

So, Cart-Pole is a pretty simple game. However, the same model can be used to train an agent to play something much more complicated like Pong or Space Invaders. Instead of a state like we're using here though, you'd want to use convolutional layers to get the state from the screen images.

I'll leave it as a challenge for you to use deep Q-learning to train an agent to play Atari games. Here's the original paper which will get you started: http://www.davidqiu.com:8888/research/nature14236.pdf.