Convolutional fitted Q iteration for vision-based control problems

Dongbin Zhao, Yuanheng Zhu, Le Lv, Yaran Chen, Qichao Zhang

Abstract: In this paper a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method is proposed to solve the control problem which takes raw image pixels as input states. A convolutional neural network (CNN) is used to approximate Q functions, termed as Q-CNN. A pretrained network, which is the result of a classification challenge on a vast set of natural images, initializes the parameters of Q-CNN. Such initialization assigns Q-CNN with the features of image representation, so it is more concentrated on the control tasks. The weights are tuned under the scheme of fitted Q iteration (FQI), which is an offline reinforcement learning method with the stable convergence property. To demonstrate the performance, a modified Food-Poison problem is simulated. The agent determines its movements based on its forward view. In the end the algorithm successfully learns a satisfied policy which has better performance than the results of previous researches.