# Structural Design Through Reinforcement Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.07288 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07288/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RL for robot locomotion and manipulation, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 16 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for robot locomotion and manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-robot-locomotion-and-manipulation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Deep reinforcement learning from human preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03741/) (2017)
- [OpenAI Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01540/) (2016)
- [Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03476/) (2016)
- [Mastering Diverse Domains through World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04104/) (2023)
- [Dota 2 with Large Scale Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06680/) (2019)
- [IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.01561/) (2018)
- [Deep Reinforcement Learning that Matters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.06560/) (2017)
- [Leveraging Procedural Generation to Benchmark Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01588/) (2019)
- [What Matters In On-Policy Reinforcement Learning? A Large-Scale Empirical Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05990/) (2020)
- [Neural reparameterization improves structural optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.04240/) (2019)
- [On the use of Artificial Neural Networks in Topology Optimisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.02563/) (2022)
- [Topology Optimization via Machine Learning and Deep Learning: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10782/) (2022)
- [Topology optimization based on moving deformable components: A new computational framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1404.4820/) (2014)
- [A Review on Feature-Mapping Methods for Structural Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10770/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces the Structural Optimization gym (SOgym), a novel open-source Reinforcement Learning (RL) environment designed to advance machine learning in Topology Optimization (TO). SOgym enables RL agents to generate physically viable and structurally robust designs by integrating the physics of TO into the reward function. To enhance scalability, SOgym leverages feature-mapping methods as a mesh-independent interface between the environment and the agent, allowing efficient interaction with the design variables regardless of mesh resolution. Baseline results use a model-free Proximal Policy Optimization agent and a model-based DreamerV3 agent. Three observation space configurations were tested. The TopOpt game-inspired configuration, an interactive educational tool that improves students' intuition in designing structures to minimize compliance under volume constraints, performed best in terms of performance and sample efficiency. The 100M parameter version of DreamerV3 produced structures within 54% of the baseline compliance achieved by traditional optimization methods and a 0% disconnection rate, an improvement over supervised learning approaches that often struggle with disconnected load paths. When comparing the learning rates of the agents to those of engineering students from the TopOpt game experiment, the DreamerV3-100M model shows a learning rate approximately four orders of magnitude lower, an impressive feat for a policy trained from scratch through trial and error. These results suggest RL's potential to solve continuous TO problems and its capacity to explore and learn from diverse design solutions. SOgym provides a platform for developing RL agents for complex structural design challenges and is publicly available to support further research in the field.