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We focus on developing efficient and reliable policy optimization strategies for robot learning with real-world data. In recent years, policy gradient methods have emerged as a promising paradigm for training control policies in simulation.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-11-07 Tyler Westenbroek , Jacob Levy , David Fridovich-Keil

Constrained Reinforcement Learning (CRL) addresses sequential decision-making problems where agents are required to achieve goals by maximizing the expected return while meeting domain-specific constraints. In this setting, policy-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-09 Alessandro Montenegro , Leonardo Cesani , Marco Mussi , Matteo Papini , Alberto Maria Metelli

Offline zero-shot reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn agents that optimize unseen reward functions without additional environment interaction. The standard approach to this problem trains task-conditioned policies by sampling task…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Nazim Bendib , Nicolas Perrin-Gilbert , Olivier Sigaud

The theory of continuous-time reinforcement learning (RL) has progressed rapidly in recent years. While the ultimate objective of RL is typically to learn deterministic control policies, most existing continuous-time RL methods rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Ziheng Cheng , Xin Guo , Yufei Zhang

Consider mutli-goal tasks that involve static environments and dynamic goals. Examples of such tasks, such as goal-directed navigation and pick-and-place in robotics, abound. Two types of Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms are used for…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-01-08 Vikas Dhiman , Shurjo Banerjee , Jeffrey M. Siskind , Jason J. Corso

Offline reinforcement learning (RL) enables learning control policies by utilizing only prior experience, without any online interaction. This can allow robots to acquire generalizable skills from large and diverse datasets, without any…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-09-24 Aviral Kumar , Anikait Singh , Stephen Tian , Chelsea Finn , Sergey Levine

A major challenge in real-world reinforcement learning (RL) is the sparsity of reward feedback. Often, what is available is an intuitive but sparse reward function that only indicates whether the task is completed partially or fully.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Desik Rengarajan , Gargi Vaidya , Akshay Sarvesh , Dileep Kalathil , Srinivas Shakkottai

This paper studies the empirical efficacy and benefits of using projection-free first-order methods in the form of Conditional Gradients, a.k.a. Frank-Wolfe methods, for training Neural Networks with constrained parameters. We draw…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-22 Sebastian Pokutta , Christoph Spiegel , Max Zimmer

Traditional control theory-based methods require tailored engineering for each system and constant fine-tuning. In power plant control, one often needs to obtain a precise representation of the system dynamics and carefully design the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-09-21 Yixuan Sun , Sami Khairy , Richard B. Vilim , Rui Hu , Akshay J. Dave

This paper proposes a safe reinforcement learning (RL) framework based on forward-invariance-induced action-space design. The control problem is cast as a Markov decision process, but instead of relying on runtime shielding or penalty-based…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-10 Chieh Tsai , Muhammad Junayed Hasan Zahed , Salim Hariri , Hossein Rastgoftar

In the trial-and-error mechanism of reinforcement learning (RL), a notorious contradiction arises when we expect to learn a safe policy: how to learn a safe policy without enough data and prior model about the dangerous region? Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-29 Haitong Ma , Changliu Liu , Shengbo Eben Li , Sifa Zheng , Wenchao Sun , Jianyu Chen

One of the main goals of reinforcement learning (RL) is to provide a~way for physical machines to learn optimal behavior instead of being programmed. However, effective control of the machines usually requires fine time discretization. The…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-12 Jakub Łyskawa , Paweł Wawrzyński

Fully autonomous vehicles promise enhanced safety and efficiency. However, ensuring reliable operation in challenging corner cases requires control algorithms capable of performing at the vehicle limits. We address this requirement by…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-08-14 Grzegorz Czechmanowski , Jan Węgrzynowski , Piotr Kicki , Krzysztof Walas

In reinforcement learning (RL), it is often advantageous to consider additional constraints on the action space to ensure safety or action relevance. Existing work on such action-constrained RL faces challenges regarding effective policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-01 Roland Stolz , Michael Eichelbeck , Matthias Althoff

Although well-established in general reinforcement learning (RL), value-based methods are rarely explored in constrained RL (CRL) for their incapability of finding policies that can randomize among multiple actions. To apply value-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-28 Tianchi Cai , Wenpeng Zhang , Lihong Gu , Xiaodong Zeng , Jinjie Gu

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a control approach that can handle nonlinear stochastic optimal control problems. However, despite the promise exhibited, RL has yet to see marked translation to industrial practice primarily due to its…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-04-15 Elton Pan , Panagiotis Petsagkourakis , Max Mowbray , Dongda Zhang , Antonio del Rio-Chanona

Online safe reinforcement learning (RL) involves training a policy that maximizes task efficiency while satisfying constraints via interacting with the environments. In this paper, our focus lies in addressing the complex challenges…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-27 Yihang Yao , Zuxin Liu , Zhepeng Cen , Peide Huang , Tingnan Zhang , Wenhao Yu , Ding Zhao

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) uses model-free techniques to optimize task-specific control policies. Despite having emerged as a promising approach for complex problems, RL is still hard to use reliably for real-world applications. Apart…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Siddhant Gangapurwala , Alexander Mitchell , Ioannis Havoutis

Goal-Conditioned Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems often have access to sparse rewards where the agent receives a reward signal only when it has achieved the goal, making policy optimization a difficult problem. Several works augment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-11 Siddhant Agarwal , Ishan Durugkar , Peter Stone , Amy Zhang

Autonomous agents must often deal with conflicting requirements, such as completing tasks using the least amount of time/energy, learning multiple tasks, or dealing with multiple opponents. In the context of reinforcement learning~(RL),…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-30 Santiago Paternain , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Alejandro Ribeiro