Enhancing Reinforcement Learning Performance in Delayed Reward System Using DQN and Heuristics

This paper suggests and implements how to apply the reinforcement learning on delayed reward system which is known to be complex to apply the machine learning technology such as Q-learning. Such games as Tetris game is known to be a delayed reward system because of its characteristics of generating sparse reward in learning process. Tetris game requires the actor’s quick judgment ability and speed of response because the blocks must be stacked in an optimal location quickly, considering the random shape and rotation of appearing blocks. Also, since the number of cases is very large due to the various block types and order, if a human-being is playing the game, the performance is limited by simply relying on human memorization capability. Therefore, we applied a reinforcement learning implemented in this study for this delayed reward system. We find that the general legacy reinforcement learning method shows its limitation in improving the performance. Hence, we apply the heuristic to increase the decision accuracy as the weighting method of reward. As a result, we were able to obtain high scores in games. Although it is not yet possible to say that this heuristic(rule-based) approach has completely conquered the game. In several experiments, this hybrid reinforcement learning shows better playability than human in terms of learning speed, as well as high scores. In this paper, it is shown that general Q-learning is not suitable for delayed reward system. And a hybrid learning that adds prioritized experience replay tactics, and the related techniques and algorithms are introduced to increase the reinforcement learning performance.