Wide and Deep Reinforcement Learning for Grid-based Action Games

For the last decade Deep Reinforcement Learning has undergone exponential development; however, less has been done to integrate linear methods into it. Our Wide and Deep Reinforcement Learning framework provides a tool that combines linear and non-linear methods into one. For practical implementations, our framework can help integrate expert knowledge while improving the performance of existing Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithms. Our research aims to generate a simple practical framework to extend such algorithms. To test this framework we develop an extension of the popular Deep Q-Networks algorithm, which we name Wide Deep Q-Networks. We analyze its performance compared to Deep Q-Networks and Linear Agents, as well as human players. We apply our new algorithm to Berkley’s Pac-Man environment. Our algorithm considerably outperforms Deep Q-Networks’ both in terms of learning speed and ultimate performance showing its potential for boosting existing algorithms.