Hands-On Q-Learning with Python

States

Whatever we need to know about our environment is stored as part of our state, which can be represented as a vector of the variables that we care about:

• The location (x and y coordinates)
• The direction
• The color of light (red or green)
• The other cars present (for example, one binary flag for each spot a car might be in)
• The distance from the destination

The following screenshot is from the game Pac-Man:

Taking Pac-Man as another example, we can use a state vector to represent the variables that we want to keep track of—such as the location of the dots left in the maze, where the Pac-Man character currently is and what direction it ...