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Gymnasium/docs/vector/index.rst
2021-11-14 08:59:04 -05:00

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.. automodule:: gym.vector
Vectorized Environments
=======================
.. toctree::
:hidden:
getting_started
intermediate
advanced
api_reference
*Vectorized environments* are environments that run multiple (independent) sub-environments, either sequentially, or in parallel using `multiprocessing`_. Vectorized environments take as input a batch of actions, and return a batch of observations. This is particularly useful, for example, when the policy is defined as a neural network that operates over a batch of observations.
Gym provides two types of vectorized environments:
- :class:`gym.vector.SyncVectorEnv`, where the sub-environment are executed sequentially.
- :class:`gym.vector.AsyncVectorEnv`, where the sub-environments are executed in parallel using `multiprocessing`_. This creates one process per sub-environment.
.. rubric:: Quickstart
Similar to :func:`gym.make`, you can run a vectorized version of a registered environment using the :func:`gym.vector.make` function. This runs multiple copies of the same environment (in parallel, by default).
The following example runs 3 copies of the ``CartPole-v1`` environment in parallel, taking as input a vector of 3 binary actions (one for each sub-environment), and returning an array of 3 observations stacked along the first dimension, with an array of rewards returned by each sub-environment, and an array of booleans indicating if the episode in each sub-environment has ended.
.. code-block::
>>> envs = gym.vector.make("CartPole-v1", num_envs=3)
>>> envs.reset()
>>> actions = np.array([1, 0, 1])
>>> observations, rewards, dones, infos = envs.step(actions)
>>> observations
array([[ 0.00122802, 0.16228443, 0.02521779, -0.23700266],
[ 0.00788269, -0.17490888, 0.03393489, 0.31735462],
[ 0.04918966, 0.19421194, 0.02938497, -0.29495203]],
dtype=float32)
>>> rewards
array([1., 1., 1.])
>>> dones
array([False, False, False])
>>> infos
({}, {}, {})
.. note::
The function :func:`gym.vector.make` is meant to be used only in basic cases (e.g. running multiple copies of the same registered environment). For any other use-cases, please use either the :class:`SyncVectorEnv` for sequential execution, or :class:`AsyncVectorEnv` for parallel execution. These use-cases may include:
- Running multiple instances of the same environment with different parameters (e.g. ``"Pendulum-v0"`` with different values for the gravity).
- Running multiple instances of an unregistered environment (e.g. a custom environment)
- Using a wrapper on some (but not all) sub-environments.
.. _multiprocessing: https://docs.python.org/3/library/multiprocessing.html