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Related papers: Safety-Constrained Reinforcement Learning for MDPs

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Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) are the standard framework for decision-making under uncertainty. While sampling-based methods scale well, they lack formal correctness guarantees, making them unsuitable for…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Debraj Chakraborty , Anirban Majumdar , Prince Mathew , Sayan Mukherjee , Jean-François Raskin

We present a general framework for applying machine-learning algorithms to the verification of Markov decision processes (MDPs). The primary goal of these techniques is to improve performance by avoiding an exhaustive exploration of the…

Most reinforcement learning (RL) approaches for the decision-making of autonomous driving consider safety as a reward instead of a cost, which makes it hard to balance the tradeoff between safety and other objectives. Human risk preference…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Yang Li , Shijie Yuan , Yuan Chang , Xiaolong Chen , Qisong Yang , Zhiyuan Yang , Hongmao Qin

We study synthesis problems with constraints in partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), where the objective is to compute a strategy for an agent that is guaranteed to satisfy certain safety and performance specifications.…

We consider discounted infinite-horizon constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs), where the goal is to find an optimal policy that maximizes the expected cumulative reward while satisfying expected cumulative constraints. Motivated by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Tingting Ni , Maryam Kamgarpour

Safety-critical learning requires policies that improve performance without leaving the safe operating regime. We study constrained policy learning where model parameters must satisfy rollout-based safety constraints that can be evaluated…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Shengfan Cao , Francesco Borrelli , Eunhyek Joa

Stochastic and soft optimal policies resulting from entropy-regularized Markov decision processes (ER-MDP) are desirable for exploration and imitation learning applications. Motivated by the fact that such policies are sensitive with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-03 Tien Mai , Patrick Jaillet

Reinforcement Learning (RL) serves as a versatile framework for sequential decision-making, finding applications across diverse domains such as robotics, autonomous driving, recommendation systems, supply chain optimization, biology,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-26 Vaneet Aggarwal , Washim Uddin Mondal , Qinbo Bai

This paper addresses the problem of learning optimal control policies for systems with uncertain dynamics and high-level control objectives specified as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulas. Uncertainty is considered in the workspace…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Yiannis Kantaros , Jun Wang

We address the issue of safety in reinforcement learning. We pose the problem in an episodic framework of a constrained Markov decision process. Existing results have shown that it is possible to achieve a reward regret of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-26 Tao Liu , Ruida Zhou , Dileep Kalathil , P. R. Kumar , Chao Tian

Robots operate under significant uncertainty, from quantifiable noise to unquantifiable unknowns, and must account for strict operational constraints, such as limited resources. In this paper, we consider the problem of synthesizing robust…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Yihao Yin , Pian Yu , Andrea Turrini , Zhiming Chi , Yong Li , Lijun Zhang

Agents controlled by the output of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms often transition to unsafe states, particularly in uncertain and partially observable environments. Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) provide a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-16 Steven Carr , Georgios Bakirtzis , Ufuk Topcu

Safety remains a central challenge in control of dynamical systems, particularly when the boundaries of unsafe sets are complex (e.g., nonconvex, nonsmooth) or unknown. This paper proposes a learning-enabled framework for safety-critical…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-09-16 Shuo Liu , Zhe Huang , Jun Zeng , Koushil Sreenath , Calin A. Belta

As a general and thus popular model for autonomous systems, partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) can capture uncertainties from different sources like sensing noises, actuation errors, and uncertain environments. However,…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-03-27 Xiaobin Zhang , Bo Wu , Hai Lin

When designing correct-by-construction controllers for autonomous collectives, three key challenges are the task specification, the modelling, and its use at practical scale. In this paper, we focus on a simple yet useful abstraction for…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-11-22 Till Schnittka , Mario Gleirscher

We study online learning in constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with adversarial losses and stochastic hard constraints, under bandit feedback. We consider three scenarios. In the first one, we address general CMDPs, where we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-10 Francesco Emanuele Stradi , Matteo Castiglioni , Alberto Marchesi , Nicola Gatti

Constrained Reinforcement Learning has been employed to enforce safety constraints on policy through the use of expected cost constraints. The key challenge is in handling expected cost accumulated using the policy and not just in a single…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Hao Jiang , Tien Mai , Pradeep Varakantham , Minh Huy Hoang

We consider partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with a set of target states and positive integer costs associated with every transition. The traditional optimization objective (stochastic shortest path) asks to minimize…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2016-05-12 Tomáš Brázdil , Krishnendu Chatterjee , Martin Chmelík , Anchit Gupta , Petr Novotný

Improving sample-efficiency and safety are crucial challenges when deploying reinforcement learning in high-stakes real world applications. We propose LAMBDA, a novel model-based approach for policy optimization in safety critical tasks…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-08 Yarden As , Ilnura Usmanova , Sebastian Curi , Andreas Krause

This paper addresses the problem of maintaining safety during training in Reinforcement Learning (RL), such that the safety constraint violations are bounded at any point during learning. In a variety of RL applications the safety of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Rohan Mitta , Hosein Hasanbeig , Jun Wang , Daniel Kroening , Yiannis Kantaros , Alessandro Abate