Cheat Sheet

This page shows some code snippets of how to use Tianshou to develop new algorithms / apply algorithms to new scenarios.

By the way, some of these issues can be resolved by using a gym.Wrapper. It could be a universal solution in the policy-environment interaction. But you can also use the batch processor Handle Batched Data Stream in Collector.

Build Policy Network

See Build the Network.

Build New Policy

See BasePolicy.

Customize Training Process

See Train a Policy with Customized Codes.

Resume Training Process

This is related to Issue 349.

To resume training process from an existing checkpoint, you need to do the following things in the training process:

  1. Make sure you write save_checkpoint_fn which saves everything needed in the training process, i.e., policy, optim, buffer; pass it to trainer;

  2. Use TensorboardLogger;

  3. To adjust the save frequency, specify save_interval when initializing TensorboardLogger.

And to successfully resume from a checkpoint:

  1. Load everything needed in the training process before trainer initialization, i.e., policy, optim, buffer;

  2. Set resume_from_log=True with trainer;

We provide an example to show how these steps work: checkout test_c51.py, test_ppo.py or test_il_bcq.py by running

$ python3 test/discrete/test_c51.py  # train some epoch
$ python3 test/discrete/test_c51.py --resume  # restore from existing log and continuing training

To correctly render the data (including several tfevent files), we highly recommend using tensorboard >= 2.5.0 (see here for the reason). Otherwise, it may cause overlapping issue that you need to manually handle with.

Parallel Sampling

Tianshou provides the following classes for parallel environment simulation:

  • DummyVectorEnv is for pseudo-parallel simulation (implemented with a for-loop, useful for debugging).

  • SubprocVectorEnv uses multiple processes for parallel simulation. This is the most often choice for parallel simulation.

  • ShmemVectorEnv has a similar implementation to SubprocVectorEnv, but is optimized (in terms of both memory footprint and simulation speed) for environments with large observations such as images.

  • RayVectorEnv is currently the only choice for parallel simulation in a cluster with multiple machines.

Although these classes are optimized for different scenarios, they have exactly the same APIs because they are sub-classes of BaseVectorEnv. Just provide a list of functions who return environments upon called, and it is all set.

env_fns = [lambda x=i: MyTestEnv(size=x) for i in [2, 3, 4, 5]]
venv = SubprocVectorEnv(env_fns)  # DummyVectorEnv, ShmemVectorEnv, or RayVectorEnv, whichever you like.
venv.reset()  # returns the initial observations of each environment
venv.step(actions)  # provide actions for each environment and get their results

By default, parallel environment simulation is synchronous: a step is done after all environments have finished a step. Synchronous simulation works well if each step of environments costs roughly the same time.

In case the time cost of environments varies a lot (e.g. 90% step cost 1s, but 10% cost 10s) where slow environments lag fast environments behind, async simulation can be used (related to Issue 103). The idea is to start those finished environments without waiting for slow environments.

Asynchronous simulation is a built-in functionality of BaseVectorEnv. Just provide wait_num or timeout (or both) and async simulation works.

env_fns = [lambda x=i: MyTestEnv(size=x, sleep=x) for i in [2, 3, 4, 5]]
# DummyVectorEnv, ShmemVectorEnv, or RayVectorEnv, whichever you like.
venv = SubprocVectorEnv(env_fns, wait_num=3, timeout=0.2)
venv.reset()  # returns the initial observations of each environment
# returns "wait_num" steps or finished steps after "timeout" seconds,
# whichever occurs first.
venv.step(actions, ready_id)

If we have 4 envs and set wait_num = 3, each of the step only returns 3 results of these 4 envs.

You can treat the timeout parameter as a dynamic wait_num. In each vectorized step it only returns the environments finished within the given time. If there is no such environment, it will wait until any of them finished.

The figure in the right gives an intuitive comparison among synchronous/asynchronous simulation.

Warning

If you use your own environment, please make sure the seed method is set up properly, e.g.,

def seed(self, seed):
    np.random.seed(seed)

Otherwise, the outputs of these envs may be the same with each other.

Handle Batched Data Stream in Collector

This is related to Issue 42.

If you want to get log stat from data stream / pre-process batch-image / modify the reward with given env info, use preproces_fn in Collector. This is a hook which will be called before the data adding into the buffer.

It will receive with “obs” and “env_id” when the collector resets the environment, and will receive six keys “obs_next”, “rew”, “done”, “info”, “policy”, “env_id” in a normal env step. It returns either a dict or a Batch with the modified keys and values.

These variables are intended to gather all the information requires to keep track of a simulation step, namely the (observation, action, reward, done flag, next observation, info, intermediate result of the policy) at time t, for the whole duration of the simulation.

For example, you can write your hook as:

import numpy as np
from collections import deque


class MyProcessor:
    def __init__(self, size=100):
        self.episode_log = None
        self.main_log = deque(maxlen=size)
        self.main_log.append(0)
        self.baseline = 0

    def preprocess_fn(**kwargs):
        """change reward to zero mean"""
        # if obs && env_id exist -> reset
        # if obs_next/act/rew/done/policy/env_id exist -> normal step
        if 'rew' not in kwargs:
            # means that it is called after env.reset(), it can only process the obs
            return Batch()  # none of the variables are needed to be updated
        else:
            n = len(kwargs['rew'])  # the number of envs in collector
            if self.episode_log is None:
                self.episode_log = [[] for i in range(n)]
            for i in range(n):
                self.episode_log[i].append(kwargs['rew'][i])
                kwargs['rew'][i] -= self.baseline
            for i in range(n):
                if kwargs['done']:
                    self.main_log.append(np.mean(self.episode_log[i]))
                    self.episode_log[i] = []
                    self.baseline = np.mean(self.main_log)
            return Batch(rew=kwargs['rew'])

And finally,

test_processor = MyProcessor(size=100)
collector = Collector(policy, env, buffer, preprocess_fn=test_processor.preprocess_fn)

Some examples are in test/base/test_collector.py.

RNN-style Training

This is related to Issue 19.

First, add an argument “stack_num” to ReplayBuffer, VectorReplayBuffer, or other types of buffer you are using, like:

buf = ReplayBuffer(size=size, stack_num=stack_num)

Then, change the network to recurrent-style, for example, Recurrent, RecurrentActorProb and RecurrentCritic.

The above code supports only stacked-observation. If you want to use stacked-action (for Q(stacked-s, stacked-a)), stacked-reward, or other stacked variables, you can add a gym.Wrapper to modify the state representation. For example, if we add a wrapper that map [s, a] pair to a new state:

  • Before: (s, a, s', r, d) stored in replay buffer, and get stacked s;

  • After applying wrapper: ([s, a], a, [s', a'], r, d) stored in replay buffer, and get both stacked s and a.

User-defined Environment and Different State Representation

This is related to Issue 38 and Issue 69.

First of all, your self-defined environment must follow the Gym’s API, some of them are listed below:

  • reset() -> state

  • step(action) -> state, reward, done, info

  • seed(s) -> List[int]

  • render(mode) -> Any

  • close() -> None

  • observation_space: gym.Space

  • action_space: gym.Space

The state can be a numpy.ndarray or a Python dictionary. Take “FetchReach-v1” as an example:

>>> e = gym.make('FetchReach-v1')
>>> e.reset()
{'observation': array([ 1.34183265e+00,  7.49100387e-01,  5.34722720e-01,  1.97805133e-04,
         7.15193042e-05,  7.73933014e-06,  5.51992816e-08, -2.42927453e-06,
         4.73325650e-06, -2.28455228e-06]),
 'achieved_goal': array([1.34183265, 0.74910039, 0.53472272]),
 'desired_goal': array([1.24073906, 0.77753463, 0.63457791])}

It shows that the state is a dictionary which has 3 keys. It will stored in ReplayBuffer as:

>>> from tianshou.data import Batch, ReplayBuffer
>>> b = ReplayBuffer(size=3)
>>> b.add(Batch(obs=e.reset(), act=0, rew=0, done=0))
>>> print(b)
ReplayBuffer(
    act: array([0, 0, 0]),
    done: array([False, False, False]),
    obs: Batch(
             achieved_goal: array([[1.34183265, 0.74910039, 0.53472272],
                                   [0.        , 0.        , 0.        ],
                                   [0.        , 0.        , 0.        ]]),
             desired_goal: array([[1.42154265, 0.62505137, 0.62929863],
                                  [0.        , 0.        , 0.        ],
                                  [0.        , 0.        , 0.        ]]),
             observation: array([[ 1.34183265e+00,  7.49100387e-01,  5.34722720e-01,
                                   1.97805133e-04,  7.15193042e-05,  7.73933014e-06,
                                   5.51992816e-08, -2.42927453e-06,  4.73325650e-06,
                                  -2.28455228e-06],
                                 [ 0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,
                                   0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,
                                   0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,
                                   0.00000000e+00],
                                 [ 0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,
                                   0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,
                                   0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,  0.00000000e+00,
                                   0.00000000e+00]]),
         ),
    rew: array([0, 0, 0]),
)
>>> print(b.obs.achieved_goal)
[[1.34183265 0.74910039 0.53472272]
 [0.         0.         0.        ]
 [0.         0.         0.        ]]

And the data batch sampled from this replay buffer:

>>> batch, indices = b.sample(2)
>>> batch.keys()
['act', 'done', 'info', 'obs', 'obs_next', 'policy', 'rew']
>>> batch.obs[-1]
Batch(
    achieved_goal: array([1.34183265, 0.74910039, 0.53472272]),
    desired_goal: array([1.42154265, 0.62505137, 0.62929863]),
    observation: array([ 1.34183265e+00,  7.49100387e-01,  5.34722720e-01,  1.97805133e-04,
                         7.15193042e-05,  7.73933014e-06,  5.51992816e-08, -2.42927453e-06,
                         4.73325650e-06, -2.28455228e-06]),
)
>>> batch.obs.desired_goal[-1]  # recommended
array([1.42154265, 0.62505137, 0.62929863])
>>> batch.obs[-1].desired_goal  # not recommended
array([1.42154265, 0.62505137, 0.62929863])
>>> batch[-1].obs.desired_goal  # not recommended
array([1.42154265, 0.62505137, 0.62929863])

Thus, in your self-defined network, just change the forward function as:

def forward(self, s, ...):
    # s is a batch
    observation = s.observation
    achieved_goal = s.achieved_goal
    desired_goal = s.desired_goal
    ...

For self-defined class, the replay buffer will store the reference into a numpy.ndarray, e.g.:

>>> import networkx as nx
>>> b = ReplayBuffer(size=3)
>>> b.add(Batch(obs=nx.Graph(), act=0, rew=0, done=0))
>>> print(b)
ReplayBuffer(
    act: array([0, 0, 0]),
    done: array([0, 0, 0]),
    info: Batch(),
    obs: array([<networkx.classes.graph.Graph object at 0x7f5c607826a0>, None,
                None], dtype=object),
    policy: Batch(),
    rew: array([0, 0, 0]),
)

But the state stored in the buffer may be a shallow-copy. To make sure each of your state stored in the buffer is distinct, please return the deep-copy version of your state in your env:

def reset():
    return copy.deepcopy(self.graph)
def step(a):
    ...
    return copy.deepcopy(self.graph), reward, done, {}

Note

Please make sure this variable is numpy-compatible, e.g., np.array([variable]) will not result in an empty array. Otherwise, ReplayBuffer cannot create an numpy array to store it.

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

This is related to Issue 121. The discussion is still goes on.

With the flexible core APIs, Tianshou can support multi-agent reinforcement learning with minimal efforts.

Currently, we support three types of multi-agent reinforcement learning paradigms:

  1. Simultaneous move: at each timestep, all the agents take their actions (example: MOBA games)

  2. Cyclic move: players take action in turn (example: Go game)

  3. Conditional move, at each timestep, the environment conditionally selects an agent to take action. (example: Pig Game)

We mainly address these multi-agent RL problems by converting them into traditional RL formulations.

For simultaneous move, the solution is simple: we can just add a num_agent dimension to state, action, and reward. Nothing else is going to change.

For 2 & 3 (cyclic move and conditional move), they can be unified into a single framework: at each timestep, the environment selects an agent with id agent_id to play. Since multi-agents are usually wrapped into one object (which we call “abstract agent”), we can pass the agent_id to the “abstract agent”, leaving it to further call the specific agent.

In addition, legal actions in multi-agent RL often vary with timestep (just like Go games), so the environment should also passes the legal action mask to the “abstract agent”, where the mask is a boolean array that “True” for available actions and “False” for illegal actions at the current step. Below is a figure that explains the abstract agent.

../_images/marl.png

The above description gives rise to the following formulation of multi-agent RL:

action = policy(state, agent_id, mask)
(next_state, next_agent_id, next_mask), reward = env.step(action)

By constructing a new state state_ = (state, agent_id, mask), essentially we can return to the typical formulation of RL:

action = policy(state_)
next_state_, reward = env.step(action)

Following this idea, we write a tiny example of playing Tic Tac Toe against a random player by using a Q-learning algorithm. The tutorial is at Multi-Agent RL.