Related papers: Safe Exploration by Solving Early Terminated MDP
In reinforcement learning (RL), an agent must explore an initially unknown environment in order to learn a desired behaviour. When RL agents are deployed in real world environments, safety is of primary concern. Constrained Markov decision…
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…
Practical reinforcement learning problems are often formulated as constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problems, in which the agent has to maximize the expected return while satisfying a set of prescribed safety constraints. In this…
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…
In this paper, we study the learning of safe policies in the setting of reinforcement learning problems. This is, we aim to control a Markov Decision Process (MDP) of which we do not know the transition probabilities, but we have access to…
In this paper we consider the problem of how a reinforcement learning agent that is tasked with solving a sequence of reinforcement learning problems (a sequence of Markov decision processes) can use knowledge acquired early in its lifetime…
In many real-world applications (e.g., planetary exploration, robot navigation), an autonomous agent must be able to explore a space with guaranteed safety. Most safe exploration algorithms in the field of reinforcement learning and…
Recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) enable its use on increasingly complex tasks, but the lack of formal safety guarantees still limits its application in safety-critical settings. A common practical approach is to augment the RL…
In many real-world reinforcement learning (RL) problems, besides optimizing the main objective function, an agent must concurrently avoid violating a number of constraints. In particular, besides optimizing performance it is crucial to…
This paper targets the efficient construction of a safety shield for decision making in scenarios that incorporate uncertainty. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are prominent models to capture such planning problems. Reinforcement learning…
We study the Safe Reinforcement Learning (SRL) problem using the Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) formulation in which an agent aims to maximize the expected total reward subject to a safety constraint on the expected total value…
This paper puts forward the concept that learning to take safe actions in unknown environments, even with probability one guarantees, can be achieved without the need for an unbounded number of exploratory trials. This is indeed possible,…
Safe reinforcement learning has been a promising approach for optimizing the policy of an agent that operates in safety-critical applications. In this paper, we propose an algorithm, SNO-MDP, that explores and optimizes Markov decision…
In many sequential decision-making problems, the goal is to optimize a utility function while satisfying a set of constraints on different utilities. This learning problem is formalized through Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs).…
Exploration is widely regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of reinforcement learning (RL), with many naive approaches succumbing to exponential sample complexity. To isolate the challenges of exploration, we propose a new…
In many real-world decision problems there is partially observed, hidden or latent information that remains fixed throughout an interaction. Such decision problems can be modeled as Latent Markov Decision Processes (LMDPs), where a latent…
In this paper, we focus on the problem of robustifying reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms with respect to model uncertainties. Indeed, in the framework of model-based RL, we propose to merge the theory of constrained Markov decision…
A major challenge in deploying reinforcement learning in online tasks is ensuring that safety is maintained throughout the learning process. In this work, we propose CERL, a new method for solving constrained Markov decision processes while…
Safety is a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), particularly in real-world applications such as autonomous driving, robotics, and healthcare. To address this, Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) are commonly used…
The applicability of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in real-world domains often requires adherence to safety constraints, a need difficult to address given the asymptotic nature of the classic RL optimization objective. In contrast…