Please recommend resources about applications of reinforcement learning on control problems

Hi everyone, I'm a student majoring in control engineering. Recently my advisor asks me to use reinforcement learning to tune a motor's controller parameters (like PID or feedforward controller's parameters), but I have no idea how to do.

I've already watched videos like Matlab's Tech Talks and have a basic understanding of how machine learning and one of its branches, reinforcement learning, work. However, I've never actually implemented these algorithms by myself before, nor do I have rigorous theoretical and mathematical foundations on ML & RL.

I know there's a watertank example in Matlab, but what it does is replacing the whole PID controller with a RL agent, instead of using RL to tune PID controller's parameters, making it difficult to be modified for my purpose.

I may take complete courses on ML & RL after the next semester begins, but for now I need to get to understand HOW to use RL (no matter using RL toolbox or code by myself) instead of RL itself.

My questions are below:

1. Are there resources (books or courses or anything) on using RL on control problems with Matlab & Simulink? I’ve found plenty resources on RL, but they are all in Python and focusing on CS-related subjects. I need to use Simulink to obtain simulation results of my system.
2. Are there online courses that are short and comprehensible for a non-CS background student? So I can have a quick overview on what I’m doing.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

Answer 1

[Harsha Priya Daggubati]

Hi,

You can refer to the following links:

1. Video Tutorials on Reinforcement Learning, to help you gain an intuition about the topic.
2. https://www.mathworks.com/videos/reinforcement-learning-part-1-what-is-reinforcement-learning-1551974943006.html
3. Documentation Link along with Tutorials.
4. https://www.mathworks.com/help/reinforcement-learning/getting-started-with-reinforcement-learning-toolbox.html
5. About Reinforcement Learning Toolbox in MATLAB.
6. https://www.mathworks.com/products/reinforcement-learning.html

[jhusy]

Though it's not what I expected, still thanks anyway!!