Learning How to Drive in a Real World Simulation with Deep Q-Networks

We present a reinforcement learning approach using Deep Q-Networks to steer a vehicle in a 3D physics simulation. Relying solely on camera image input the approach directly learns steering the vehicle in an end-to-end manner. The system is able to learn human driving behavior without the need of any labeled training data. An action-based reward function is proposed, which is motivated by a potential use in real world reinforcement learning scenarios. Compared to a naive distance-based reward function, it improves the overall driving behavior of the vehicle agent. The agent is even able to reach comparable to human driving performance on a previously unseen track in our simulation environment.