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Related papers: A Lyapunov-based Approach to Safe Reinforcement Le…

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This paper presents a novel approach to reinforcement learning (RL) for control systems that provides probabilistic stability guarantees using finite data. Leveraging Lyapunov's method, we propose a probabilistic stability theorem that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Minghao Han , Lixian Zhang , Chenliang Liu , Zhipeng Zhou , Jun Wang , Wei Pan

Reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic, factored Markov decision processes (FMDPs) is studied. We propose an algorithm called FMDP-BF, which leverages the factorization structure of FMDP. The regret of FMDP-BF is shown to be exponentially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-11 Xiaoyu Chen , Jiachen Hu , Lihong Li , Liwei Wang

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found limited success beyond simulated applications, and one main reason is the absence of safety guarantees during the learning process. Real world systems would realistically fail or break…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-22 Richard Cheng , Gabor Orosz , Richard M. Murray , Joel W. Burdick

Fairness plays a crucial role in various multi-agent systems (e.g., communication networks, financial markets, etc.). Many multi-agent dynamical interactions can be cast as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). While existing research has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-02 Peizhong Ju , Arnob Ghosh , Ness B. Shroff

We consider a new form of reinforcement learning (RL) that is based on opportunities to directly learn the optimal control policy and a general Markov decision process (MDP) framework devised to support these opportunities. Derivations of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-02 Yingdong Lu , Mark S. Squillante , Chai Wah Wu

Safety is one of the main challenges in applying reinforcement learning to realistic environmental tasks. To ensure safety during and after training process, existing methods tend to adopt overly conservative policy to avoid unsafe…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-27 Xiao Zhang , Hai Zhang , Hongtu Zhou , Chang Huang , Di Zhang , Chen Ye , Junqiao Zhao

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms can achieve state-of-the-art performance in decision-making and continuous control tasks. However, applying RL algorithms on safety-critical systems still needs to be well justified due to the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Mahmoud Selim , Amr Alanwar , M. Watheq El-Kharashi , Hazem M. Abbas , Karl H. Johansson

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a compelling data-driven paradigm for synthesizing controllers for complex systems when accurate physical models are unavailable; however, most existing control-oriented RL methods assume stationarity and,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Austin Coursey , Abel Diaz-Gonzalez , Marcos Quinones-Grueiro , Gautam Biswas

Ensuring safety is a foundational requirement for large language models (LLMs). Achieving an appropriate balance between enhancing the utility of model outputs and mitigating their potential for harm is a complex and persistent challenge.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Kartik Pandit , Sourav Ganguly , Arnesh Banerjee , Shaahin Angizi , Arnob Ghosh

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms aim to learn optimal decisions in unknown environments through experience of taking actions and observing the rewards gained. In some cases, the environment is not influenced by the actions of the RL…

Reinforcement learning (RL) agents with pre-specified reward functions cannot provide guaranteed safety across variety of circumstances that an uncertain system might encounter. To guarantee performance while assuring satisfaction of safety…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-04-20 Aquib Mustafa , Majid Mazouchi , Subramanya Nageshrao , Hamidreza Modares

A common setting of reinforcement learning (RL) is a Markov decision process (MDP) in which the environment is a stochastic discrete-time dynamical system. Whereas MDPs are suitable in such applications as video-games or puzzles, physical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-11-29 Pavel Osinenko , Dmitrii Dobriborsci , Grigory Yaremenko , Georgiy Malaniya

In this paper, we focus on the problem about direct way to design a stable controller for nonlinear system. A framework of learning controller with Lyapunov-based constraint is proposed, which is intended to transform designing and analyis…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-03-11 Me Le , Chi Yanxun , Li Zhiwei , Xu Dongfu , Zhang Yulong

As more inverter-connected renewable resources are integrated into the grid, frequency stability may degrade because of the reduction in mechanical inertia and damping. A common approach to mitigate this degradation in performance is to use…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-12-30 Wenqi Cui , Yan Jiang , Baosen Zhang

To overcome the curse of dimensionality and curse of modeling in Dynamic Programming (DP) methods for solving classical Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems, Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are popular. In this paper, we consider…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-29 Arghyadip Roy , Vivek Borkar , Abhay Karandikar , Prasanna Chaporkar

This paper develops an unified framework to study finite-sample convergence guarantees of a large class of value-based asynchronous reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. We do this by first reformulating the RL algorithms as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-06 Zaiwei Chen , Siva Theja Maguluri , Sanjay Shakkottai , Karthikeyan Shanmugam

This paper presents a reinforcement learning-based neuroadaptive control framework for robotic manipulators operating under deferred constraints. The proposed approach improves traditional barrier Lyapunov functions by introducing a smooth…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-20 Hamed Rahimi Nohooji , Abolfazl Zaraki , Holger Voos

Reinforcement learning (RL) in the context of control systems offers wide possibilities of controller adaptation. Given an infinite-horizon cost function, the so-called critic of RL approximates it with a neural net and sends this…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-26 Pavel Osinenko , Lukas Beckenbach , Thomas Göhrt , Stefan Streif

In classical reinforcement learning, when exploring an environment, agents accept arbitrary short term loss for long term gain. This is infeasible for safety critical applications, such as robotics, where even a single unsafe action may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-01-30 Matteo Turchetta , Felix Berkenkamp , Andreas Krause