This tutorial aims to introduce the concept of policy training in Reinforcement Learning (RL). We will guide you on how to improve the policy that an AI agent uses to decide its actions in an environment.
By the end of this tutorial, you will understand what policy training is, how it works, and how to implement it in Python using the OpenAI Gym.
In Reinforcement Learning, a policy is a strategy that the agent employs to determine the next action based on the current state. Policy training is the process of optimizing this policy so that the agent can make better decisions that would lead to higher rewards.
Consider a simple game where an agent can move in four directions: up, down, left, or right. The policy could be a simple rule like "if the goal is to the left, then move left". In policy training, we want to refine this rule so that it can make the best move under different conditions.
import gym
# Create environment
env = gym.make("Taxi-v3")
# Initialize random policy
policy = [env.action_space.sample() for _ in range(env.observation_space.n)]
# Train the policy
for state in range(env.observation_space.n):
# Initialize new policy as a copy of the old one
new_policy = list(policy)
# Calculate the action-value function
Q = [sum([prob * (reward + discount_factor * policy[trans_state]) for prob, trans_state, reward, _ in env.P[state][action]]) for action in range(env.action_space.n)]
# Update the policy
new_policy[state] = max(list(range(env.action_space.n)), key=lambda action: Q[action])
# Print the new policy
print(new_policy)
In this code, we first initialize a random policy. Then, we iterate over all states and calculate the action-value function for each action. Finally, we update our policy based on this function.
The output will be the updated policy, which should be an array of actions.
This tutorial introduced you to the concept of policy training in Reinforcement Learning. We discussed how to train a policy and improve the decision-making process of an AI agent. We also provided a practical Python example where we trained a policy using the OpenAI Gym.
Implement a policy training algorithm for a simple game where an agent can move in four directions: up, down, left, or right.
Implement a policy training algorithm for a more complex game, like chess or tic-tac-toe.
The solutions will depend on the specific games chosen. The key is to initialize a policy, calculate the action-value function for each action, and then update the policy based on this function.
Try to implement policy training in different environments with different complexities. This will help you understand the concept better and improve your skills.