Fixed reinforcement learning to run with any screen size; added diagrams.

Author: Michael Antonov

_static/img/reinforcement_learning_diagram.jpg

@@ -23,7 +23,10 @@
 As the agent observes the current state of the environment and chooses
 an action, the environment *transitions* to a new state, and also
 returns a reward that indicates the consequences of the action. In this
-task, the environment terminates if the pole falls over too far.
+task, rewards are +1 for every incremental timestep and the environment
+terminates if the pole falls over too far or the crat mover more then 2.4
+units away from center. This means better performing scenarios will run
+for longer duration, accumulating larger return.
 
 The CartPole task is designed so that the inputs to the agent are 4 real
 values representing the environment state (position, velocity, etc.).
@@ -97,7 +100,9 @@
 # For this, we're going to need two classses:
 #
 # -  ``Transition`` - a named tuple representing a single transition in
-#    our environment
+#    our environment. It maps essentially maps (state, action) pairs
+#    to their (next_state, reward) result, with the state being the
+#    screen difference image as described later on.
 # -  ``ReplayMemory`` - a cyclic buffer of bounded size that holds the
 #    transitions observed recently. It also implements a ``.sample()``
 #    method for selecting a random batch of transitions for training.
@@ -197,22 +202,32 @@ def __len__(self):
 # difference between the current and previous screen patches. It has two
 # outputs, representing :math:`Q(s, \mathrm{left})` and
 # :math:`Q(s, \mathrm{right})` (where :math:`s` is the input to the
-# network). In effect, the network is trying to predict the *quality* of
+# network). In effect, the network is trying to predict the *expected return* of
 # taking each action given the current input.
 #
 
 class DQN(nn.Module):
 
-    def __init__(self):
+    def __init__(self, h, w):
         super(DQN, self).__init__()
         self.conv1 = nn.Conv2d(3, 16, kernel_size=5, stride=2)
         self.bn1 = nn.BatchNorm2d(16)
         self.conv2 = nn.Conv2d(16, 32, kernel_size=5, stride=2)
         self.bn2 = nn.BatchNorm2d(32)
         self.conv3 = nn.Conv2d(32, 32, kernel_size=5, stride=2)
         self.bn3 = nn.BatchNorm2d(32)
-        self.head = nn.Linear(448, 2)
 
+        # Number of Linear input connections depends on output of conv2d layers
+        # and therefore the input image size, so compute it.
+        def conv2d_size_out(size, kernel_size = 5, stride = 2):
+            return (size - (kernel_size - 1) - 1) // stride  + 1
+        convw = conv2d_size_out(conv2d_size_out(conv2d_size_out(w)))
+        convh = conv2d_size_out(conv2d_size_out(conv2d_size_out(h)))
+        linear_input_size = convw * convh * 32
+        self.head = nn.Linear(linear_input_size, 2) # 448 or 512
+
+    # Called with either one element to determine next action, or a batch
+    # during optimization. Returns tensor([[left0exp,right0exp]...]).
     def forward(self, x):
         x = F.relu(self.bn1(self.conv1(x)))
         x = F.relu(self.bn2(self.conv2(x)))
@@ -234,23 +249,20 @@ def forward(self, x):
                     T.Resize(40, interpolation=Image.CUBIC),
                     T.ToTensor()])
 
-# This is based on the code from gym.
-screen_width = 600
-
-
-def get_cart_location():
+def get_cart_location(screen_width):
     world_width = env.x_threshold * 2
     scale = screen_width / world_width
     return int(env.state[0] * scale + screen_width / 2.0)  # MIDDLE OF CART
 
-
 def get_screen():
-    screen = env.render(mode='rgb_array').transpose(
-        (2, 0, 1))  # transpose into torch order (CHW)
-    # Strip off the top and bottom of the screen
-    screen = screen[:, 160:320]
-    view_width = 320
-    cart_location = get_cart_location()
+    # Returned requested by gym is 400x600x3, but is sometimes larger such as
+    # as 800x1200x3. Transpose into torch order (CHW).
+    screen = env.render(mode='rgb_array').transpose((2, 0, 1))
+    # Cart is in the lower half, so strip off the top and bottom of the screen
+    _, screen_height, screen_width = screen.shape
+    screen = screen[:, int(screen_height*0.4):int(screen_height * 0.8)]
+    view_width = int(screen_width * 0.6)
+    cart_location = get_cart_location(screen_width)
     if cart_location < view_width // 2:
         slice_range = slice(view_width)
     elif cart_location > (screen_width - view_width // 2):
@@ -298,15 +310,23 @@ def get_screen():
 #    episode.
 #
 
-BATCH_SIZE = 128
+BATCH_SIZE = 196 #128
 GAMMA = 0.999
 EPS_START = 0.9
-EPS_END = 0.05
-EPS_DECAY = 200
+EPS_END = 0.07
+EPS_DECAY = 300
 TARGET_UPDATE = 10
 
-policy_net = DQN().to(device)
-target_net = DQN().to(device)
+# Get screen size so that we can initialize layers correctly based on shape
+# returned from AI gym. Typical dimentions at this pont are close to 3x40x90
+# which is the result of a clamped and down-scaled buffer in get_screen()
+init_screen = get_screen()
+_, _, screen_height, screen_width = init_screen.shape
+#screen_height = init_screen.shape[2]
+#print("Screen size w,h:", screen_width, " ", screen_height)
+
+policy_net = DQN(screen_height, screen_width).to(device)
+target_net = DQN(screen_height, screen_width).to(device)
 target_net.load_state_dict(policy_net.state_dict())
 target_net.eval()
 
@@ -325,6 +345,9 @@ def select_action(state):
     steps_done += 1
     if sample > eps_threshold:
         with torch.no_grad():
+            # t.max(1) will return largest value for column of each row.
+            # second column on max result is index of where max element was
+            # found, so we pick action with the larger expected reward.
             return policy_net(state).max(1)[1].view(1, 1)
     else:
         return torch.tensor([[random.randrange(2)]], device=device, dtype=torch.long)
@@ -376,10 +399,12 @@ def optimize_model():
         return
     transitions = memory.sample(BATCH_SIZE)
     # Transpose the batch (see http://stackoverflow.com/a/19343/3343043 for
-    # detailed explanation).
+    # detailed explanation). This converts batch-array of Transitions
+    # to Transition of batch-arrays.
     batch = Transition(*zip(*transitions))
 
     # Compute a mask of non-final states and concatenate the batch elements
+    # (a final state would've been the one after which simulation ended)
     non_final_mask = torch.tensor(tuple(map(lambda s: s is not None,
                                           batch.next_state)), device=device, dtype=torch.uint8)
     non_final_next_states = torch.cat([s for s in batch.next_state
@@ -389,10 +414,15 @@ def optimize_model():
     reward_batch = torch.cat(batch.reward)
 
     # Compute Q(s_t, a) - the model computes Q(s_t), then we select the
-    # columns of actions taken
+    # columns of actions taken. These are the actions which would've been taken
+    # for each batch state according to policy_net
     state_action_values = policy_net(state_batch).gather(1, action_batch)
 
     # Compute V(s_{t+1}) for all next states.
+    # Expected values of actions for non_final_next_states are computed based
+    # on the "older" target_net; selecting their best reward with max(1)[0].
+    # This is merged based on the mask, such that we'll have either the expected
+    # state value or 0 in case the state was final.
     next_state_values = torch.zeros(BATCH_SIZE, device=device)
     next_state_values[non_final_mask] = target_net(non_final_next_states).max(1)[0].detach()
     # Compute the expected Q values
@@ -418,10 +448,11 @@ def optimize_model():
 # fails), we restart the loop.
 #
 # Below, `num_episodes` is set small. You should download
-# the notebook and run lot more epsiodes.
+# the notebook and run lot more epsiodes, such as 300+ for meaningful
+# duration improvements.
 #
 
-num_episodes = 50
+num_episodes = 500
 for i_episode in range(num_episodes):
     # Initialize the environment and state
     env.reset()
@@ -454,7 +485,7 @@ def optimize_model():
             episode_durations.append(t + 1)
             plot_durations()
             break
-    # Update the target network
+    # Update the target network, copying all weights and biases in DQN
     if i_episode % TARGET_UPDATE == 0:
         target_net.load_state_dict(policy_net.state_dict())
 
@@ -463,3 +494,16 @@ def optimize_model():
 env.close()
 plt.ioff()
 plt.show()
+
+######################################################################
+# Here is the diagram that illustrates the overall resulting flow.
+#
+# .. figure:: /_static/img/reinforcement_learning_diagram.jpg
+#
+# Actions are chosen either randomly or based on a policy, getting the next
+# step sample for the gym environment. We record the results in the
+# replay memory and also perform optimization step on every iteration.
+# Optimization picks a random batch from the replay memory to do training of the
+# new policy. "Older" target_net, used in optimization to computed expected
+#  Q values is updated occasionally to keep it current.
+#