demo-random-search-RL

A toy demo based on the following paper:

Mania, H., Guy, A., & Recht, B. (2018). Simple random search provides a competitive approach to reinforcement learning. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07055

Method:

The basic random search in Mania et al. 2018 (see alg 1), which is basically the finite difference method.

Results:

Here's the learning curve on a 5x5 grid world, where the agent is trained to find the goal while avoiding the punishment.

Here's a sample path on the grid world.

• red dot: reward
• black dot: punishment