TorchBringer is an open-source framework that provides a simple interface for operating with pre-implemented deep reinforcement learning algorithms built on top of PyTorch. The interfaces provided can be used to operate deep RL agents either locally or remotely via gRPC. Currently, TorchBringer supports the following algorithms

• DQN

Quickstart

To install TorchBringer, run

pip install --upgrade pip
pip install torchbringer

Local

Here's a simple project for running a TorchBringer agent on gymnasium's Cartpole environment.

import gymnasium as gym
from itertools import count
import torch
from torchbringer.servers.torchbringer_agent import TorchBringerAgent

device = torch.device("cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu")

env = gym.make("CartPole-v1")
state, info = env.reset()

config = {
    # Check the reference section to understand config formatting
}

dqn = TorchBringerAgent()
dqn.initialize(config)
steps_done = 0

num_episodes = 600
for i_episode in range(num_episodes):
    state, info = env.reset()
    reward = torch.tensor([0.0], device=device)
    terminal = False
    
    state = torch.tensor(state, dtype=torch.float32, device=device).unsqueeze(0)
    for t in count():
        observation, reward, terminated, truncated, _ = env.step(dqn.step(state, reward, terminal).item())
        state = None if terminated else torch.tensor(observation, dtype=torch.float32, device=device).unsqueeze(0) 
        reward = torch.tensor([reward], device=device)
        terminal = terminated or truncated

        if terminal:
            dqn.step(state, reward, terminal)
            break

Server

To start a TorchBringer server on a particular port, run

python -m torchbringer.servers.grpc.torchbringer_grpc_server <PORT> # For gRPC
python -m torchbringer.servers.socket.torchbringer_socket_server <PORT> # For socket

You can communicate with this server by using the provided Python client (see below) or develop a client of your own from the files found in torchbringer/servers/grpc in this repo to communicate with the server from applications built with different programming languages.

from torchbringer.servers.grpc.torchbringer_grpc_client import TorchBringerGRPCAgentClient

Reference

cartpole_local_dqn.py provides a simple example of TorchBringer being used on gymnasium's CartPole-v1 envinronment. cartpole_grpc_dqn.py provides an example of how to use the gRPC interface to learn remotely.

The main class that is used in this framework is TorchBringerAgent, implemented in servers/. The gRPC server has an interface very similar to it.

TorchBringerAgent

Method	Parameters	Explanation
initialize()	config: dict	Initializes the agent according to the config. Read the config section for information on formatting
step()	state: Tensor, reward: Tensor, terminal: bool	Performs an optimization step and returns the selected action for this

gRPC interface

Note that there is a client implemented in servers/grpc/torchbringer_grpc_client.py that has the exact same interface as TorchBringerAgent. This reference is mostly meant for building clients in other programming languages.

Method	Parameters	Explanation
initialize()	config: string	Accepts a serialized config dict
step()	state: Matrix(dimensions list[int], value: list[float]), reward: float, terminal: bool	State should be given as a flattened matrix, action is returned the same way

Socket interface

Note that there is a client implemented in servers/socket/torchbringer_socket_client.py that has the exact same interface as TorchBringerAgent. This reference is mostly meant for building clients in other programming languages.

Servers expect to receive a JSON string containing the field "method" for specifying the method by name as well as other parameters depending on the method. After being called, server will return a response in the form of another JSON string

Method	Parameters	Explanation	Returns
"initialize"	config: JSON object	Accepts a serialized config dict	Information in the form {"info": string}
step()	state: list, reward: float, terminal: bool	The current percept from which to act	The action to take in the form {"action": list}

Config formatting

The config file is a dictionary that specifies the behavior of the agent. The RL implementation is specified by the value of the key "type". It also accepts a variety of other arguments depending on the imeplementation type.

Currently supported implementations are dqn.

The following specify the arguments allowed by each implementation type.

DQN

Argument	Explanation
"run_name": string	If given, will track episode reward and average loss through Aim for this run
"action_space": dict	The gym Space that represents the action space of the environment. Read the Space table on Other specifications
"gamma": float	Value of gamma
"tau": float = 1.0	Value of tau
"target_network_update_frequency": int = 1	Steps before updating target network based on tau
"epsilon": dict	The epsilon. Read the Epsilon table on Other specifications
"batch_size": int	Batch size
"grad_clip_value": float	Value to clip gradient. No clipping if not specified
"loss": dict	The loss. Read the Loss section on Other specifications
"optimizer": dict	The optimizer. Read the Optimizer section on Other specifications
"replay_buffer_size": int	Capacity of the replay buffer
"network": list[dict]	list of layer specs for the neural network. Read the Layers section on Other specifications

Other specifications

These are specifications for dictionaries that are used in the specification of learners. They each have an argument "type" and a corresponding class or function. In the case of classes, all of its initializing parameters can be passed as arguments in this dictionary. When specific arguments are expected, they will be made explicit.

Space

Type	Class
discrete	gym.spaces.Discrete

Epsilon

You can read components/epsilon.py to see how each of these are implemented

Type	Arguments	Explanation
exp_decrease	"start": float, "end": float, "steps_to_end": int	Decreases the epsilon exponentially over time.

Loss

Type	Function
smooth_l1_loss	torch.nn.SmoothL1Loss
mseloss	nn.MSELoss

Optimizer

Type	Class
adamw	torch.optim.AdamW
rmsprop	optim.RMSprop

Layers

Type	Function
linear	torch.nn.Linear
relu	torch.nn.ReLU

Example config

config = {
    "type": "dqn",
    "action_space": {
        "type": "discrete",
        "n": 2
    },
    "gamma": 0.99,
    "tau": 0.005,
    "epsilon": {
        "type": "exp_decrease",
        "start": 0.9,
        "end": 0.05,
        "steps_to_end": 1000
    },
    "batch_size": 128,
    "grad_clip_value": 100,
    "loss": "smooth_l1_loss",
    "optimizer": {
        "type": "adamw",
        "lr": 1e-4, 
        "amsgrad": True
    },
    "replay_buffer_size": 10000,
    "network": [
        {
            "type": "linear",
            "in_features": int(n_observations),
            "out_features": 128,
        },
        {"type": "relu"},
        {
            "type": "linear",
            "in_features": 128,
            "out_features": 128,
        },
        {"type": "relu"},
        {
            "type": "linear",
            "in_features": 128,
            "out_features": int(n_actions),
        },
    ]
}