BananaBrain Navigation

Introduction

In this project, the agent navigates (and collect bananas!) in a large, square world.

A reward of +1 is provided for collecting a yellow banana, and a reward of -1 is provided for collecting a blue banana. Thus, the goal of the agent is to collect as many yellow bananas as possible while avoiding blue bananas.

The state space has 37 dimensions and contains the agent's velocity, along with ray-based perception of objects around agent's forward direction. Given this information, the agent has to learn how to best select actions. Four discrete actions are available, corresponding to:

• 0 - move forward.
• 1 - move backward.
• 2 - turn left.
• 3 - turn right.

The task is episodic, and in order to solve the environment, the agent must get an average score of +13 over 100 consecutive episodes.

Dependencies

To set up your python environment to run the code in this repository, follow the instructions below.

1. Create (and activate) a new environment with Python 3.6.

   • Linux or Mac:

   conda create --name bananabrain python=3.6
   source activate bananabrain

   • Windows:

   conda create --name bananabrain python=3.6 
   activate bananabrain

2. Follow the instructions in this repository to perform a minimal install of OpenAI gym.

   • Next, install the classic control environment group by following the instructions here.
   • Then, install the box2d environment group by following the instructions here.

3. Clone the repository (if you haven't already!), and navigate to the python/ folder. Then, install several dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/Juenjie/BananaBrain.git
cd BananaBrain/python
pip install .

4. Create an IPython kernel for the bananabrain environment.

python -m ipykernel install --user --name bananabrain --display-name "bananabrain"

5. Before running code in a notebook, change the kernel to match the bananabrain environment by using the drop-down Kernel menu.

Installation of the unity environment

1. Download the environment from one of the links below. You need only select the environment that matches your operating system:

   • Linux: click here
   • Mac OSX: click here
   • Windows (32-bit): click here
   • Windows (64-bit): click here

   (For Windows users) Check out this link if you need help with determining if your computer is running a 32-bit version or 64-bit version of the Windows operating system.

   (For AWS) If you'd like to train the agent on AWS (and have not enabled a virtual screen), then please use this link to obtain the environment.

2. Place the file in the BananaBrain folder, and unzip (or decompress) the file.

Instructions

Follow the instructions in Navigation.ipynb to get started!