Hands-On Reinforcement Learning for Games. Implementing self-learning agents in games using artificial intelligence techniques

Micheal Lanham

With the increased presence of AI in the gaming industry, developers are challenged to create highly responsive and adaptive games by integrating artificial intelligence into their projects. This book is your guide to learning how various reinforcement learning techniques and algorithms play an important role in game development with Python.Starting with the basics, this book will help you build a strong foundation in reinforcement learning for game development. Each chapter will assist you in implementing different reinforcement learning techniques, such as Markov decision processes (MDPs), Q-learning, actor-critic methods, SARSA, and deterministic policy gradient algorithms, to build logical self-learning agents. Learning these techniques will enhance your game development skills and add a variety of features to improve your game agent’s productivity. As you advance, you’ll understand how deep reinforcement learning (DRL) techniques can be used to devise strategies to help agents learn from their actions and build engaging games.By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to apply reinforcement learning techniques to build a variety of projects and contribute to open source applications.

Hands-On Reinforcement Learning with Python. Master reinforcement and deep reinforcement learning using OpenAI Gym and TensorFlow

Sudharsan Ravichandiran

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is the trending and most promising branch of artificial intelligence. Hands-On Reinforcement learning with Python will help you master not only the basic reinforcement learning algorithms but also the advanced deep reinforcement learning algorithms.The book starts with an introduction to Reinforcement Learning followed by OpenAI Gym, and TensorFlow. You will then explore various RL algorithms and concepts, such as Markov Decision Process, Monte Carlo methods, and dynamic programming, including value and policy iteration. This example-rich guide will introduce you to deep reinforcement learning algorithms, such as Dueling DQN, DRQN, A3C, PPO, and TRPO. You will also learn about imagination-augmented agents, learning from human preference, DQfD, HER, and many more of the recent advancements in reinforcement learning.By the end of the book, you will have all the knowledge and experience needed to implement reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning in your projects, and you will be all set to enter the world of artificial intelligence.

Hands-On RESTful API Design Patterns and Best Practices. Design, develop, and deploy highly adaptable, scalable, and secure RESTful web APIs

Harihara Subramanian J, Pethuru Raj

This book deals with the Representational State Transfer (REST) paradigm, which is an architectural style that allows networked devices to communicate with each other over the internet. With the help of this book, you’ll explore the concepts of service-oriented architecture (SOA), event-driven architecture (EDA), and resource-oriented architecture (ROA). This book covers why there is an insistence for high-quality APIs toward enterprise integration.It also covers how to optimize and explore endpoints for microservices with API gateways and touches upon integrated platforms and Hubs for RESTful APIs. You’ll also understand how application delivery and deployments can be simplified and streamlined in the REST world. The book will help you dig deeper into the distinct contributions of RESTful services for IoT analytics and applications.Besides detailing the API design and development aspects, this book will assist you in designing and developing production-ready, testable, sustainable, and enterprise-grade APIs. By the end of the book, you’ll be empowered with all that you need to create highly flexible APIs for next-generation RESTful services and applications.

Hands-On RESTful Python Web Services. Develop RESTful web services or APIs with modern Python 3.7 - Second Edition

Gaston C. Hillar

Python is the language of choice for millions of developers worldwide that builds great web services in RESTful architecture. This second edition of Hands-On RESTful Python Web Services will cover the best tools you can use to build engaging web services.This book shows you how to develop RESTful APIs using the most popular Python frameworks and all the necessary stacks with Python, combined with related libraries and tools. You’ll learn to incorporate all new features of Python 3.7, Flask 1.0.2, Django 2.1, Tornado 5.1, and also a new framework, Pyramid. As you advance through the chapters, you will get to grips with each of these frameworks to build various web services, and be shown use cases and best practices covering when to use a particular framework.You’ll then successfully develop RESTful APIs with all frameworks and understand how each framework processes HTTP requests and routes URLs. You’ll also discover best practices for validation, serialization, and deserialization. In the concluding chapters, you will take advantage of specific features available in certain frameworks such as integrated ORMs, built-in authorization and authentication, and work with asynchronous code. At the end of each framework, you will write tests for RESTful APIs and improve code coverage.By the end of the book, you will have gained a deep understanding of the stacks needed to build RESTful web services.

Hands-On RESTful Web Services with ASP.NET Core 3. Design production-ready, testable, and flexible RESTful APIs for web applications and microservices

Samuele Resca

In recent times, web services have evolved to play a prominent role in web development. Applications are now designed to be compatible with any device and platform, and web services help us keep their logic and UI separate. Given its simplicity and effectiveness in creating web services, the RESTful approach has gained popularity, and this book will help you build RESTful web services using ASP.NET Core.This REST book begins by introducing you to the basics of the REST philosophy, where you'll study the different stages of designing and implementing enterprise-grade RESTful web services. You'll also gain a thorough understanding of ASP.NET Core's middleware approach and learn how to customize it. The book will later guide you through improving API resilience, securing your service, and applying different design patterns and techniques to achieve a scalable web service. In addition to this, you'll learn advanced techniques for caching, monitoring, and logging, along with implementing unit and integration testing strategies. In later chapters, you will deploy your REST web services on Azure and document APIs using Swagger and external tools such as Postman.By the end of this book, you will have learned how to design RESTful web services confidently using ASP.NET Core with a focus on code testability and maintainability.

Hands-On RESTful Web Services with Go. Develop elegant RESTful APIs with Golang for microservices and the cloud - Second Edition

Naren Yellavula

Building RESTful web services can be tough as there are countless standards and ways to develop API. In modern architectures such as microservices, RESTful APIs are common in communication, making idiomatic and scalable API development crucial. This book covers basic through to advanced API development concepts and supporting tools.You’ll start with an introduction to REST API development before moving on to building the essential blocks for working with Go. You’ll explore routers, middleware, and available open source web development solutions in Go to create robust APIs, and understand the application and database layers to build RESTful web services. You’ll learn various data formats like protocol buffers and JSON, and understand how to serve them over HTTP and gRPC. After covering advanced topics such as asynchronous API design and GraphQL for building scalable web services, you’ll discover how microservices can benefit from REST. You’ll also explore packaging artifacts in the form of containers and understand how to set up an ideal deployment ecosystem for web services. Finally, you’ll cover the provisioning of infrastructure using infrastructure as code (IaC) and secure your REST API.By the end of the book, you’ll have intermediate knowledge of web service development and be able to apply the skills you’ve learned in a practical way.

Hands-On RESTful Web Services with TypeScript 3. Design and develop scalable RESTful APIs for your applications

Biharck Muniz Araújo

In the world of web development, leveraging data is the key to developing comprehensive applications, and RESTful APIs help you to achieve this systematically. This book will guide you in designing and developing web services with the power of TypeScript 3 and Node.js. You'll design REST APIs using best practices for request handling, validation, authentication, and authorization. You'll also understand how to enhance the capabilities of your APIs with ODMs, databases, models and views, as well as asynchronous callbacks. This book will guide you in securing your environment by testing your services and initiating test automation with different testing approaches. Furthermore, you'll get to grips with developing secure, testable, and more efficient code, and be able to scale and deploy TypeScript 3 and Node.js-powered RESTful APIs on cloud platforms such as the Google Cloud Platform. Finally, the book will help you explore microservices and give you an overview of what GraphQL can allow you to do.By the end of this book, you will be able to use RESTful web services to create your APIs for mobile and web apps and other platforms.

Hands-On Robotics Programming with C++. Leverage Raspberry Pi 3 and C++ libraries to build intelligent robotics applications

Dinesh Tavasalkar

C++ is one of the most popular legacy programming languages for robotics, and a combination of C++ and robotics hardware is used in many leading industries. This book will bridge the gap between Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming and enable you to develop applications for Raspberry Pi. You'll even be able to implement C programs in Raspberry Pi with the WiringPi library.The book will guide you through developing a fully functional car robot and writing programs to move it in different directions. You’ll then create an obstacle-avoiding robot using an ultrasonic sensor. In addition to this, you’ll find out how to control the robot wirelessly using your PC or Mac. This book will also help you work with object detection and tracking using OpenCV, and guide you through exploring face detection techniques. Finally, you will create an Android app and control the robot wirelessly with an Android smartphone.By the end of this book, you will have gained experience in developing a robot using Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming.

Hands-On Robotics with JavaScript. Build robotic projects using Johnny-Five and control hardware with JavaScript and Raspberry Pi

Kassandra Perch

JavaScript has an effective set of frameworks and libraries that provide support for embedded device programming and the robotics ecosystem. You’ll be able to put your JavaScript knowledge to work with this practical robotics guide.The book starts by guiding you in setting up an environment to program robots with JavaScript and Rasberry Pi 3. You will build beginner-level projects, such as a line-following robot, and then upgrade your robotics skills with a series of projects that help you get to grips with the Johnny-Five library. As you progress, you’ll learn how you can improve your projects by enabling advanced hardware components and programming concepts. You’ll even build an advanced AI-enabled robot, connect its NodeBots to the internet, create a NodeBots Swarm, and explore Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT).By the end of this book, you will have enhanced your robot programming skills by building a range of simple to complex projects.

Hands-On ROS for Robotics Programming. Program highly autonomous and AI-capable mobile robots powered by ROS

Bernardo Ronquillo Japón

Connecting a physical robot to a robot simulation using the Robot Operating System (ROS) infrastructure is one of the most common challenges faced by ROS engineers. With this book, you'll learn how to simulate a robot in a virtual environment and achieve desired behavior in equivalent real-world scenarios.This book starts with an introduction to GoPiGo3 and the sensors and actuators with which it is equipped. You'll then work with GoPiGo3's digital twin by creating a 3D model from scratch and running a simulation in ROS using Gazebo. Next, the book will show you how to use GoPiGo3 to build and run an autonomous mobile robot that is aware of its surroundings. Finally, you'll find out how a robot can learn tasks that have not been programmed in the code but are acquired by observing its environment. You'll even cover topics such as deep learning and reinforcement learning.By the end of this robot programming book, you'll be well-versed with the basics of building specific-purpose applications in robotics and developing highly intelligent autonomous robots from scratch.

Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers. Building real-time embedded systems using FreeRTOS, STM32 MCUs, and SEGGER debug tools

Brian Amos

A real-time operating system (RTOS) is used to develop systems that respond to events within strict timelines. Real-time embedded systems have applications in various industries, from automotive and aerospace through to laboratory test equipment and consumer electronics. These systems provide consistent and reliable timing and are designed to run without intervention for years.This microcontrollers book starts by introducing you to the concept of RTOS and compares some other alternative methods for achieving real-time performance. Once you've understood the fundamentals, such as tasks, queues, mutexes, and semaphores, you'll learn what to look for when selecting a microcontroller and development environment. By working through examples that use an STM32F7 Nucleo board, the STM32CubeIDE, and SEGGER debug tools, including SEGGER J-Link, Ozone, and SystemView, you'll gain an understanding of preemptive scheduling policies and task communication. The book will then help you develop highly efficient low-level drivers and analyze their real-time performance and CPU utilization. Finally, you'll cover tips for troubleshooting and be able to take your new-found skills to the next level.By the end, you'll have built on your embedded system skills and will be able to create real-time systems using microcontrollers and FreeRTOS.

Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers. Create high-performance, real-time embedded systems using FreeRTOS, STM32 MCUs and SEGGER debug tools - Second Edition

Jim Yuill, Penn Linder

Want to stay ahead of the curve with embedded systems development? The updated edition of Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers is packed with cutting-edge content to up your skills. It contains everything you need to know about real-time operating systems, how they work, and why they’re essential for today’s time-critical applications; learn about FreeRTOS and its primary capabilities and APIs. You’ll find a detailed overview of system-design topics such as memory management, project-design topics (MCU, IDE, and RTOS API), and hands-on system use, as well as the system platform, dev-board with an MCU and debug-probe, and development tools (IDE, build system, source-code debugging).The new edition includes more than 20 real-world embedded applications showcasing the latest features of FreeRTOS, teaching you how to implement them in your projects, and exploring how to optimize your code with dynamic analysis. It also provides example programs on a GitHub repo for you to explore with detailed instructions. You’ll learn how to create and install your own FreeRTOS system on the dev-board, and set up an IDE project with debugging tools. With dozens of reference manuals listed, you’ll never be short on resources for system development.Stay ahead of the curve — get your second edition of Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers today!

Hands-On SAS For Data Analysis. A practical guide to performing effective queries, data visualization, and reporting techniques

Harish Gulati

SAS is one of the leading enterprise tools in the world today when it comes to data management and analysis. It enables the fast and easy processing of data and helps you gain valuable business insights for effective decision-making. This book will serve as a comprehensive guide that will prepare you for the SAS certification exam.After a quick overview of the SAS architecture and components, the book will take you through the different approaches to importing and reading data from different sources using SAS. You will then cover SAS Base and 4GL, understanding data management and analysis, along with exploring SAS functions for data manipulation and transformation. Next, you'll discover SQL procedures and get up to speed on creating and validating queries. In the concluding chapters, you'll learn all about data visualization, right from creating bar charts and sample geographic maps through to assigning patterns and formats. In addition to this, the book will focus on macro programming and its advanced aspects.By the end of this book, you will be well versed in SAS programming and have the skills you need to easily handle and manage your data-related problems in SAS.

Hands-On Security in DevOps. Ensure continuous security, deployment, and delivery with DevSecOps

Tony Hsiang-Chih Hsu

DevOps has provided speed and quality benefits with continuous development and deployment methods, but it does not guarantee the security of an entire organization. Hands-On Security in DevOps shows you how to adopt DevOps techniques to continuously improve your organization’s security at every level, rather than just focusing on protecting your infrastructure.This guide combines DevOps and security to help you to protect cloud services, and teaches you how to use techniques to integrate security directly in your product. You will learn how to implement security at every layer, such as for the web application, cloud infrastructure, communication, and the delivery pipeline layers. With the help of practical examples, you’ll explore the core security aspects, such as blocking attacks, fraud detection, cloud forensics, and incident response. In the concluding chapters, you will cover topics on extending DevOps security, such as risk assessment, threat modeling, and continuous security.By the end of this book, you will be well-versed in implementing security in all layers of your organization and be confident in monitoring and blocking attacks throughout your cloud services.

Hands-On Serverless Applications with Go. Build real-world, production-ready applications with AWS Lambda

Mohamed Labouardy

Serverless architecture is popular in the tech community due to AWS Lambda. Go is simple to learn, straightforward to work with, and easy to read for other developers; and now it's been heralded as a supported language for AWS Lambda. This book is your optimal guide to designing a Go serverless application and deploying it to Lambda.This book starts with a quick introduction to the world of serverless architecture and its benefits, and then delves into AWS Lambda using practical examples. You'll then learn how to design and build a production-ready application in Go using AWS serverless services with zero upfront infrastructure investment. The book will help you learn how to scale up serverless applications and handle distributed serverless systems in production. You will also learn how to log and test your application.Along the way, you'll also discover how to set up a CI/CD pipeline to automate the deployment process of your Lambda functions. Moreover, you'll learn how to troubleshoot and monitor your apps in near real-time with services such as AWS CloudWatch and X-ray. This book will also teach you how to secure the access with AWS Cognito.By the end of this book, you will have mastered designing, building, and deploying a Go serverless application.

Hands-On Serverless Applications with Kotlin. Develop scalable and cost-effective web applications using AWS Lambda and Kotlin

Hardik Trivedi, Ameya Kulkarni

Serverless is a cloud computing execution model where the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation and provisioning of servers. Many companies now use serverless architectures to cut costs and improve scalability. Thanks to its concise and expressive syntax and a smooth learning curve, Kotlin is a great fit for developing serverless applications.With this book, you’ll be able to put your knowledge to work by implementing serverless technology in your applications and become productive in no time. Complete with detailed explanation of essential concepts and examples, this book will help you understand the serverless architecture fundamentals and how to design serverless architectures for your applications. You’ll also explore how AWS Lambda functions work. The book will guide you in designing, building, securing, and deploying your application to production, along with implementing non-functional requirements such as auditing and logging. Furthermore, you’ll discover how to scale up and orchestrate serverless applications using an open source framework and handle distributed serverless systems in production.By the end of the book, you’ll be able to build scalable and cost-efficient Kotlin applications with a serverless framework.

Hands-On Serverless Computing. Build, run and orchestrate serverless applications using AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions

Kuldeep Chowhan

Serverless applications and architectures are gaining momentum and are increasingly being used by companies of all sizes. Serverless software takes care of many problems that developers face when running systems and servers, such as fault tolerance, centralized logging, horizontal scalability, and deployments.You will learn how to harness serverless technology to rapidly reduce production time and minimize your costs, while still having the freedom to customize your code, without hindering functionality. Upon finishing the book, you will have the knowledge and resources to build your own serverless application hosted in AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, and will have experienced the benefits of event-driven technology for yourself.This hands-on guide dives into the basis of serverless architectures and how to build them using Node.js as a programming language, Visual Studio Code for code editing, and Postman for quickly and securely developing applications without the hassle of configuring and maintaining infrastructure on three public cloud platforms.

Hands-On Serverless Computing with Google Cloud. Build, deploy, and containerize apps using Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, and cloud-native technologies

Richard Rose

Google Cloud's serverless platform allows organizations to scale fully managed solutions without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. With this book, you will learn how to design, develop, and deploy full stack serverless apps on Google Cloud.The book starts with a quick overview of the Google Cloud console, its features, user interface (UI), and capabilities. After getting to grips with the Google Cloud interface and its features, you will explore the core aspects of serverless products such as Cloud Run, Cloud Functions and App Engine. You will also learn essential features such as version control, containerization, and identity and access management with the help of real-world use cases. Later, you will understand how to incorporate continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) techniques for serverless applications. Toward the concluding chapters, you will get to grips with how key technologies such as Knative enable Cloud Run to be hosted on multiple platforms including Kubernetes and VMware.By the end of this book, you will have become proficient in confidently developing, managing, and deploying containerized applications on Google Cloud.

Hands-On Server-Side Web Development with Swift. Build dynamic web apps by leveraging two popular Swift web frameworks: Vapor 3.0 and Kitura 2.5

Angus Yeung

This book is about building professional web applications and web services using Swift 4.0 and leveraging two popular Swift web frameworks: Vapor 3.0 and Kitura 2.5. In the first part of this book, we’ll focus on the creation of basic web applications from Vapor and Kitura boilerplate projects. As the web apps start out simple, more useful techniques, such as unit test development, debugging, logging, and the build and release process, will be introduced to readers.In the second part, we’ll learn different aspects of web application development with server-side Swift, including setting up routes and controllers to process custom client requests, working with template engines such as Leaf and Stencil to create dynamic web content, beautifying the content with Bootstrap, managing user access with authentication framework, and leveraging the Object Relational Mapping (ORM) abstraction layer (Vapor’s Fluent and Kitura’s Kuery) to perform database operations.Finally, in the third part, we’ll develop web services in Swift and build our API Gateway, microservices and database backend in a three-tier architecture design. Readers will learn how to design RESTful APIs, work with asynchronous processes, and leverage container technology such as Docker in deploying microservices to cloud hosting services such as Vapor Cloud and IBM Cloud.

Hands-On Simulation Modeling with Python. Develop simulation models for improved efficiency and precision in the decision-making process - Second Edition

Giuseppe Ciaburro

Simulation modelling is an exploration method that aims to imitate physical systems in a virtual environment and retrieve useful statistical inferences from it. The ability to analyze the model as it runs sets simulation modelling apart from other methods used in conventional analyses. This book is your comprehensive and hands-on guide to understanding various computational statistical simulations using Python. The book begins by helping you get familiarized with the fundamental concepts of simulation modelling, that’ll enable you to understand the various methods and techniques needed to explore complex topics. Data scientists working with simulation models will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide. As you advance, you’ll dive deep into numerical simulation algorithms, including an overview of relevant applications, with the help of real-world use cases and practical examples. You'll also find out how to use Python to develop simulation models and how to use several Python packages. Finally, you’ll get to grips with various numerical simulation algorithms and concepts, such as Markov Decision Processes, Monte Carlo methods, and bootstrapping techniques.By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to construct and deploy simulation models of your own to overcome real-world challenges.

Hands-On Simulation Modeling with Python. Develop simulation models to get accurate results and enhance decision-making processes

Giuseppe Ciaburro

Simulation modeling helps you to create digital prototypes of physical models to analyze how they work and predict their performance in the real world. With this comprehensive guide, you'll understand various computational statistical simulations using Python.Starting with the fundamentals of simulation modeling, you'll understand concepts such as randomness and explore data generating processes, resampling methods, and bootstrapping techniques. You'll then cover key algorithms such as Monte Carlo simulations and Markov decision processes, which are used to develop numerical simulation models, and discover how they can be used to solve real-world problems. As you advance, you'll develop simulation models to help you get accurate results and enhance decision-making processes. Using optimization techniques, you'll learn to modify the performance of a model to improve results and make optimal use of resources. The book will guide you in creating a digital prototype using practical use cases for financial engineering, prototyping project management to improve planning, and simulating physical phenomena using neural networks.By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to construct and deploy simulation models of your own to overcome real-world challenges.

Hands-On Software Architecture with Golang. Design and architect highly scalable and robust applications using Go

Jyotiswarup Raiturkar

Building software requires careful planning and architectural considerations; Golang was developed with a fresh perspective on building next-generation applications on the cloud with distributed and concurrent computing concerns.Hands-On Software Architecture with Golang starts with a brief introduction to architectural elements, Go, and a case study to demonstrate architectural principles. You'll then move on to look at code-level aspects such as modularity, class design, and constructs specific to Golang and implementation of design patterns. As you make your way through the chapters, you'll explore the core objectives of architecture such as effectively managing complexity, scalability, and reliability of software systems. You'll also work through creating distributed systems and their communication before moving on to modeling and scaling of data. In the concluding chapters, you'll learn to deploy architectures and plan the migration of applications from other languages.By the end of this book, you will have gained insight into various design and architectural patterns, which will enable you to create robust, scalable architecture using Golang.

Hands-On Software Architecture with Java. Learn key architectural techniques and strategies to design efficient and elegant Java applications

Giuseppe Bonocore

Well-written software architecture is the core of an efficient and scalable enterprise application. Java, the most widespread technology in current enterprises, provides complete toolkits to support the implementation of a well-designed architecture.This book starts with the fundamentals of architecture and takes you through the basic components of application architecture. You'll cover the different types of software architectural patterns and application integration patterns and learn about their most widespread implementation in Java. You'll then explore cloud-native architectures and best practices for enhancing existing applications to better suit a cloud-enabled world. Later, the book highlights some cross-cutting concerns and the importance of monitoring and tracing for planning the evolution of the software, foreseeing predictable maintenance, and troubleshooting. The book concludes with an analysis of the current status of software architectures in Java programming and offers insights into transforming your architecture to reduce technical debt.By the end of this software architecture book, you'll have acquired some of the most valuable and in-demand software architect skills to progress in your career.

Hands-On Software Engineering with Golang. Move beyond basic programming to design and build reliable software with clean code

Achilleas Anagnostopoulos

Over the last few years, Go has become one of the favorite languages for building scalable and distributed systems. Its opinionated design and built-in concurrency features make it easy for engineers to author code that efficiently utilizes all available CPU cores.This Golang book distills industry best practices for writing lean Go code that is easy to test and maintain, and helps you to explore its practical implementation by creating a multi-tier application called Links ‘R’ Us from scratch. You’ll be guided through all the steps involved in designing, implementing, testing, deploying, and scaling an application. Starting with a monolithic architecture, you’ll iteratively transform the project into a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that supports the efficient out-of-core processing of large link graphs. You’ll learn about various cutting-edge and advanced software engineering techniques such as building extensible data processing pipelines, designing APIs using gRPC, and running distributed graph processing algorithms at scale. Finally, you’ll learn how to compile and package your Go services using Docker and automate their deployment to a Kubernetes cluster.By the end of this book, you’ll know how to think like a professional software developer or engineer and write lean and efficient Go code.