These are my notes on trying to edit the opeai baselines codebase to balance a cartpole from the down position. They are pretty scattered.

First I just run the built in examples to get a feel and try out deepq networks.

The PPO algorithm at the bottom is the reccommended one still I think. I got the pole kind of upright and would balance for a couple seconds maybe. Work in progress. The ppo example has some funky batching going on that you need to reshape your observations for.

https://github.com/openai/baselines

Some of these are ready to roll on anything you throw at them

They use python3.

pip3 install tensorflow-gpu

pip3 install cloudpickle

running a deepq cartpole example

checkout source

https://github.com/openai/baselines/blob/master/baselines/deepq/experiments/train_cartpole.py

    act = deepq.learn(
        env,
        q_func=model,
        lr=1e-3,
        max_timesteps=100000,
        buffer_size=50000,
        exploration_fraction=0.1,
        exploration_final_eps=0.02,
        print_freq=10,
        callback=callback
    )

what is all this shit.

Has quickly suppressed  exploration

has a clear upward trend. But the increase dies off at episode 300 or so. Learning rate decay?

took around 300 episodes to reach reward 200

python3 -m baselines.deepq.experiments.enjoy_cartpole

Pretty good looking

The pong trainer is now called run_atari.py

sudo apt install python3-opencv

Hmm. Defaults to playing breakout actually. Highly exploratory at first. Still basically totally random after a couple mins

The buffer size is actually smaller than I’d expected. 10000?

simple.py is where the learn function is defined.

Hmmm explloration fraction is fraction of time for random play to be turned off over.

Is it getting better? Maybe. Still at 90% random. reward ~0.2

After about 2 hours 13,000 episodes still at 32% exploration. reward ~ 2

How much is from reduction of randomness, vs improvement of q-network? I suppose I could make a graph of reward vs exploration % using current network

trying ppo2 now (this is apparently openai goto method at the moment for first attempt)

https://blog.openai.com/openai-baselines-ppo/

I don’t know what to attribute this to necessarily but it is very quickly outperforming the q learning

like in 30seconds

clipfrac is probably how often the clipping bound gets hit

approxkl is approximate kullback-leibler divergence

looking inside the networks,

pi is the move probability distribution layer

vf is the value function

The MlpPolicy class will be useful for lower dimensional tasks. That is the multilayer perceptron, using  a bunch of fully connected layers

on a non simulated system, lower processor count to 1. The -np option on mpirun

Or just follow the mujoco example which is using only 1 cpu

Ah. This whole time it was saving in the /tmp folder in a time stamped folder

without threshold stopping, the thing went absolutely insane. You need to box in the pole

trying to make the square of height, so  that it more emphasizes a total height achieved? Maybe only give reward for new record height? + any height nearly all the way up

beefing up the force magntidue. I think it is a little too wimpy to get it over vertical

Maybe lower episode end so it spends more time trying to get higher than trying to just stay in bounds

Wait, should I not add those vector wrapper guys?

Hey! Sort of kind of success… It gets it up there sometimes, but then it can’t really keep it up there… That’s odd.

Wow. This is not a good integrator. Under no force the pendulum is obviously gaining energy. Should that matter much? I switched around the ordering to get a leapfrog. Much better.

custom cartpole instance to work from down position and editted to work with ppo2. To more closely match mujoco example, i switched from discrete actions to a continuous choice. I was trying to shape the reward to keep it in bounds. We’re getting there maybe. Picking the starting position happens in reset. Most everything else is a straight copy from the gym env

import logging
import math
import gym
from gym import spaces
from gym.utils import seeding
import numpy as np

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

class CartPoleEnv(gym.Env):
    metadata = {
        'render.modes': ['human', 'rgb_array'],
        'video.frames_per_second' : 50
    }

    def __init__(self):
        self.gravity = 9.8
        self.masscart = 1.0
        self.masspole = 0.1
        self.total_mass = (self.masspole + self.masscart)
        self.length = 0.5 # actually half the pole's length
        self.polemass_length = (self.masspole * self.length)
        self.force_mag = 30.0
        self.tau = 0.02  # seconds between state updates

        # Angle at which to fail the episode
        # we expect full swings
        self.theta_threshold_radians =  np.pi  #12 * 2 * math.pi / 360
        self.x_threshold = 2.4

        # Angle limit set to 2 * theta_threshold_radians so failing observation is still within bounds
        high = np.array([
            self.x_threshold * 2,
            np.finfo(np.float32).max,
            self.theta_threshold_radians * 2,
            np.finfo(np.float32).max])
        high2 = np.array([1])
        self.action_space = spaces.Box(-high2, high2)# spaces.Discrete(2)
        self.observation_space = spaces.Box(-high, high)

        self._seed()
        self.viewer = None
        self.state = None

        self.steps_beyond_done = None
        self.steps = 0
        self.num_envs = 1
        self.viewer = None
    viewer = None
    def _seed(self, seed=None):
        self.np_random, seed = seeding.np_random(seed)
        return [seed]

    def _step(self, action):
        #assert self.action_space.contains(action), "%r (%s) invalid"%(action, type(action))
        #print(action)
        action =action[0] # max(-1, min(action[0],1))
        state = self.state
        x, x_dot, theta, theta_dot = state
        #force = self.force_mag if action==1 else -self.force_mag
        force = self.force_mag * action
        #print(action)
        #print(state)

        x  = x + self.tau * x_dot
        theta = theta + self.tau * theta_dot
        costheta = math.cos(theta)
        sintheta = math.sin(theta)
        temp = (force + self.polemass_length * theta_dot * theta_dot * sintheta) / self.total_mass
        thetaacc = (self.gravity * sintheta - costheta* temp) / (self.length * (4.0/3.0 - self.masspole * costheta * costheta / self.total_mass))
        xacc  = temp - self.polemass_length * thetaacc * costheta / self.total_mass
        
        x_dot = x_dot + self.tau * xacc
        
        theta_dot = theta_dot + self.tau * thetaacc
        self.state = (x,x_dot,theta,theta_dot)
        
        done =  x < -self.x_threshold \
                or x > self.x_threshold \
                or theta < -np.pi * 2 \
                or theta > np.pi * 4 \
                or self.steps > 1024
        done = bool(done)
        
        self.steps += 1
        limit = 200

        reward = 0.0
        if  x < -self.x_threshold or x > self.x_threshold:
            reward -= 1.0
        reward += (np.cos(theta)+1)**2
        reward -= 0.1 * action**2 
        reward -= 0.1 * x**2 
        #reward = reward/2048
        '''
        if not done:
            reward = 1.0
        elif self.steps_beyond_done is None:
            # Pole just fell!
            self.steps_beyond_done = 0
            reward = 1.0
        else:
            if self.steps_beyond_done == 0:
                logger.warning("You are calling 'step()' even though this environment has already returned done = True. You should always call 'reset()' once you receive 'done = True' -- any further steps are undefined behavior.")
            self.steps_beyond_done += 1
            reward = 0.0
        '''
        #print(np.array(self.state).reshape((1,-1)), reward, done, {})
        return np.array(self.state).reshape((1,-1)), reward, done, {}

    def _reset(self):
        #self.state = self.np_random.uniform(low=-0.05, high=0.05, size=(4,))
        #x, xdot, theta, thetadot
        self.state = np.array([0, 0, np.pi, 0])
        self.steps_beyond_done = None
        self.steps = 0
        return np.array(self.state).reshape((1,-1))

    def _render(self, mode='human', close=False):
        if close:
            if self.viewer is not None:
                self.viewer.close()
                self.viewer = None
            return

        screen_width = 600
        screen_height = 400

        world_width = self.x_threshold*2
        scale = screen_width/world_width
        carty = 100 # TOP OF CART
        polewidth = 10.0
        polelen = scale * 1.0
        cartwidth = 50.0
        cartheight = 30.0

        if self.viewer is None:
            from gym.envs.classic_control import rendering
            self.viewer = rendering.Viewer(screen_width, screen_height)
            l,r,t,b = -cartwidth/2, cartwidth/2, cartheight/2, -cartheight/2
            axleoffset =cartheight/4.0
            cart = rendering.FilledPolygon([(l,b), (l,t), (r,t), (r,b)])
            self.carttrans = rendering.Transform()
            cart.add_attr(self.carttrans)
            self.viewer.add_geom(cart)
            l,r,t,b = -polewidth/2,polewidth/2,polelen-polewidth/2,-polewidth/2
            pole = rendering.FilledPolygon([(l,b), (l,t), (r,t), (r,b)])
            pole.set_color(.8,.6,.4)
            self.poletrans = rendering.Transform(translation=(0, axleoffset))
            pole.add_attr(self.poletrans)
            pole.add_attr(self.carttrans)
            self.viewer.add_geom(pole)
            self.axle = rendering.make_circle(polewidth/2)
            self.axle.add_attr(self.poletrans)
            self.axle.add_attr(self.carttrans)
            self.axle.set_color(.5,.5,.8)
            self.viewer.add_geom(self.axle)
            self.track = rendering.Line((0,carty), (screen_width,carty))
            self.track.set_color(0,0,0)
            self.viewer.add_geom(self.track)

        if self.state is None: return None

        x = self.state
        cartx = x[0]*scale+screen_width/2.0 # MIDDLE OF CART
        self.carttrans.set_translation(cartx, carty)
        self.poletrans.set_rotation(-x[2])

        return self.viewer.render(return_rgb_array = mode=='rgb_array')





#!/usr/bin/env python
import argparse
from baselines import bench, logger
from custom_cart import CartPoleEnv

def train(env_id, num_timesteps, seed):
    from baselines.common import set_global_seeds
    from baselines.common.vec_env.vec_normalize import VecNormalize
    from baselines.ppo2 import ppo2
    from baselines.ppo2.policies import MlpPolicy
    import gym
    import tensorflow as tf
    from baselines.common.vec_env.dummy_vec_env import DummyVecEnv
    ncpu = 1
    config = tf.ConfigProto(allow_soft_placement=True,
                            intra_op_parallelism_threads=ncpu,
                            inter_op_parallelism_threads=ncpu)
    tf.Session(config=config).__enter__()
    def make_env():
        env = CartPoleEnv()#gym.make(env_id)
        env = bench.Monitor(env, logger.get_dir())
        return env
    env = DummyVecEnv([make_env])
    env = VecNormalize(env)
    #env = CartPoleEnv()
    set_global_seeds(seed)
    policy = MlpPolicy
    ppo2.learn(policy=policy, env=env, nsteps=2048, nminibatches=32,
        lam=0.95, gamma=0.99, noptepochs=10, log_interval=1,
        ent_coef=0.0,
        lr=3e-4,
        cliprange=0.2,
        total_timesteps=num_timesteps,
        save_interval=1)


def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(formatter_class=argparse.ArgumentDefaultsHelpFormatter)
    parser.add_argument('--env', help='environment ID', default='Hopper-v1')
    parser.add_argument('--seed', help='RNG seed', type=int, default=0)
    parser.add_argument('--num-timesteps', type=int, default=int(1e6))
    args = parser.parse_args()
    logger.configure()
    train(args.env, num_timesteps=args.num_timesteps, seed=args.seed)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

A script to view resulting network

from baselines.ppo2 import ppo2
import pickle
import tensorflow as tf
import numpy as np
ncpu = 1

filebase = '/tmp/openai-2017-12-27-18-56-28-890229/'
modelfile = filebase + 'checkpoints/00466'


config = tf.ConfigProto(allow_soft_placement=True,
                        intra_op_parallelism_threads=ncpu,
                        inter_op_parallelism_threads=ncpu)
tf.Session(config=config).__enter__()
output = open(filebase + 'make_model.pkl', 'rb')
model =  pickle.load(output)()


model.load(modelfile)

dones = [False]
states = [None]
obs = np.array([[0,0,np.pi,0]])

actions, values, states, neglogpacs = model.step(obs, states, dones)

from custom_cart import CartPoleEnv

env = CartPoleEnv()
ob = env.reset()
done = False
for i in range(2000):

	actions, values, states, neglogpacs = model.step(ob.reshape((1,-1)), states, dones)
	action = actions[0]
	ob, reward, done, _ = env.step(action)
	env.render()