English
Related papers

Related papers: Towards Safe Reinforcement Learning Using NMPC and…

200 papers

We present foundations for using Model Predictive Control (MPC) as a differentiable policy class for reinforcement learning in continuous state and action spaces. This provides one way of leveraging and combining the advantages of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-15 Brandon Amos , Ivan Dario Jimenez Rodriguez , Jacob Sacks , Byron Boots , J. Zico Kolter

A policy in deep reinforcement learning (RL), either deterministic or stochastic, is commonly parameterized as a Gaussian distribution alone, limiting the learned behavior to be unimodal. However, the nature of many practical…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-20 SM Mazharul Islam , Manfred Huber

Policy gradient algorithms are widely used in reinforcement learning and belong to the class of approximate dynamic programming methods. This paper studies two key policy gradient algorithms, the Natural Policy Gradient and the Gauss-Newton…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-11 Bowen Song , Sebastien Gros , Andrea Iannelli

In high-stake scenarios like medical treatment and auto-piloting, it's risky or even infeasible to collect online experimental data to train the agent. Simulation-based training can alleviate this issue, but may suffer from its inherent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-16 Jialian Li , Tongzheng Ren , Dong Yan , Hang Su , Jun Zhu

Linear dynamical systems that obey stochastic differential equations are canonical models. While optimal control of known systems has a rich literature, the problem is technically hard under model uncertainty and there are hardly any…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-06-09 Mohamad Kazem Shirani Faradonbeh , Mohamad Sadegh Shirani Faradonbeh

Model predictive control (MPC) is an effective method for controlling robotic systems, particularly autonomous aerial vehicles such as quadcopters. However, application of MPC can be computationally demanding, and typically requires…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-02-17 Tianhao Zhang , Gregory Kahn , Sergey Levine , Pieter Abbeel

During initial iterations of training in most Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms, agents perform a significant number of random exploratory steps. In the real world, this can limit the practicality of these algorithms as it can lead to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Ashish Kumar Jayant , Shalabh Bhatnagar

Direct policy gradient methods for reinforcement learning and continuous control problems are a popular approach for a variety of reasons: 1) they are easy to implement without explicit knowledge of the underlying model 2) they are an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-03-26 Maryam Fazel , Rong Ge , Sham M. Kakade , Mehran Mesbahi

As robotic systems move from highly structured environments to open worlds, incorporating uncertainty from dynamics learning or state estimation into the control pipeline is essential for robust performance. In this paper we present a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-09-14 Robert Dyro , James Harrison , Apoorva Sharma , Marco Pavone

We develop a model-free approach to optimally control stochastic, Markovian systems subject to a reach-avoid constraint. Specifically, the state trajectory must remain within a safe set while reaching a target set within a finite time…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-30 Tingting Ni , Maryam Kamgarpour

Simulation-to-decision learning enables safe policy training in digital environments without risking real-world deployment, and has become essential in mission-critical domains such as supply chains and industrial systems. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-11 Hongyu Cao , Jinghan Zhang , Kunpeng Liu , Dongjie Wang , Feng Xia , Haifeng Chen , Xiaohua Hu , Yanjie Fu

Policy evaluation is a crucial step in many reinforcement-learning procedures, which estimates a value function that predicts states' long-term value under a given policy. In this paper, we focus on policy evaluation with linear function…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-06-12 Simon S. Du , Jianshu Chen , Lihong Li , Lin Xiao , Dengyong Zhou

Model predictive control (MPC) is widely used in industries but implementing it poses challenges due to hardware or time constraints. A promising solution is to approximate the MPC policy using function approximators like neural networks.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-08 Chenchen Zhou , Yi Cao , Shuang-hua Yang

We propose a novel Stochastic Model Predictive Control (MPC) for uncertain linear systems subject to probabilistic constraints. The proposed approach leverages offline learning to extract key features of affine disturbance feedback…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-11-22 Hotae Lee , Francesco Borrelli

In this paper, we present a Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL)-driven Adaptive Stochastic Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (SNMPC) to optimize uncertainty handling, constraints robustification, feasibility, and closed-loop performance. To…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-11-09 Baha Zarrouki , Chenyang Wang , Johannes Betz

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has demonstrated a huge potential in learning optimal policies without any prior knowledge of the process to be controlled. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a popular control technique which is able to deal with…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2019-04-10 Mario Zanon , Sébastien Gros , Alberto Bemporad

This letter studies multi-agent reinforcement learning in partially observable Markov potential games. Solving this problem is challenging due to partial observability, decentralized information, and the curse of dimensionality. First, to…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-04-02 Wonseok Yang , Thinh T. Doan

Reinforcement learning for control over continuous spaces typically uses high-entropy stochastic policies, such as Gaussian distributions, for local exploration and estimating policy gradient to optimize performance. Many robotic control…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-03 Ya-Chien Chang , Sicun Gao

In contact-rich tasks, the hybrid, multi-modal nature of contact dynamics poses great challenges in model representation, planning, and control. Recent efforts have attempted to address these challenges via data-driven methods, learning…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-11 Hien Bui , Michael Posa

Since its introduction a decade ago, \emph{relative entropy policy search} (REPS) has demonstrated successful policy learning on a number of simulated and real-world robotic domains, not to mention providing algorithmic components used by…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-18 Aldo Pacchiano , Jonathan Lee , Peter Bartlett , Ofir Nachum