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Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods have been proven successful in solving manipulation tasks autonomously. However, RL is still not widely adopted on real robotic systems because working with real hardware entails additional challenges,…

This manuscript surveys reinforcement learning from the perspective of optimization and control with a focus on continuous control applications. It surveys the general formulation, terminology, and typical experimental implementations of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-11-13 Benjamin Recht

This paper applies a reinforcement learning (RL) method to solve infinite horizon continuous-time stochastic linear quadratic problems, where drift and diffusion terms in the dynamics may depend on both the state and control. Based on…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-09-17 Na Li , Xun Li , Jing Peng , Zuo Quan Xu

Designing control policies for legged locomotion is complex due to the under-actuated and non-continuous robot dynamics. Model-free reinforcement learning provides promising tools to tackle this challenge. However, a major bottleneck of…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-03-08 Tsung-Yen Yang , Tingnan Zhang , Linda Luu , Sehoon Ha , Jie Tan , Wenhao Yu

Safety stands as the primary obstacle preventing the widespread adoption of learning-based robotic systems in our daily lives. While reinforcement learning (RL) shows promise as an effective robot learning paradigm, conventional RL…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Maeva Guerrier , Karthik Soma , Hassan Fouad , Giovanni Beltrame

This paper presents the concept of an adaptive safe padding that forces Reinforcement Learning (RL) to synthesise optimal control policies while ensuring safety during the learning process. Policies are synthesised to satisfy a goal,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-24 Mohammadhosein Hasanbeig , Alessandro Abate , Daniel Kroening

In this paper, we investigate the optimal output tracking problem for linear discrete-time systems with unknown dynamics using reinforcement learning and robust output regulation theory. This output tracking problem only allows to utilize…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2021-01-22 Ci Chen , Lihua Xie , Yi Jiang , Kan Xie , Shengli Xie

Reinforcement learning (RL) has proven to be particularly effective in solving complex decision-making problems for a wide range of applications. Safe reinforcement learning refers to a class of constrained problems where the constraint…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-13 Dhruv Singh Kushwaha , Zoleikha Abdollahi Biron

It is quite challenging to ensure the safety of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in an unknown and stochastic environment under hard constraints that require the system state not to reach certain specified unsafe regions. Many popular…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-06-14 Yixuan Wang , Simon Sinong Zhan , Ruochen Jiao , Zhilu Wang , Wanxin Jin , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Chao Huang , Qi Zhu

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful framework for optimal decision-making and control but often lacks provable guarantees for safety-critical applications. In this paper, we introduce a novel recovery-based shielding framework that…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-18 Alexander W. Goodall , Francesco Belardinelli

Reinforcement learning (RL) enables agents to learn optimal behaviors through interaction with their environment and has been increasingly deployed in safety-critical applications, including autonomous driving. Despite its promise, RL is…

When deploying autonomous agents in unstructured environments over sustained periods of time, adaptability and robustness oftentimes outweigh optimality as a primary consideration. In other words, safety and survivability constraints play a…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-04-08 Motoya Ohnishi , Gennaro Notomista , Masashi Sugiyama , Magnus Egerstedt

The primary goal of reinforcement learning is to develop decision-making policies that prioritize optimal performance, frequently without considering safety. In contrast, safe reinforcement learning seeks to reduce or avoid unsafe behavior.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Zahra Shahrooei , Ali Baheri

Model-based reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising tool for developing controllers for real world systems (e.g., robotics, autonomous driving, etc.). However, real systems often have constraints imposed on their state space…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-22 Akshita Gupta , Inseok Hwang

One of the key challenges to deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) is to ensure safety at both training and testing phases. In this work, we propose a novel technique of unsupervised action planning to improve the safety of on-policy…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-09-30 Hao-Lun Hsu , Qiuhua Huang , Sehoon Ha

Reinforcement learning (RL) for robotics is challenging due to the difficulty in hand-engineering a dense cost function, which can lead to unintended behavior, and dynamical uncertainty, which makes exploration and constraint satisfaction…

Designing reliable decision strategies for autonomous urban driving is challenging. Reinforcement learning (RL) has been used to automatically derive suitable behavior in uncertain environments, but it does not provide any guarantee on the…

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a promising approach for achieving autonomous driving due to robust decision-making capabilities. RL learns a driving policy through trial and error in traffic scenarios, guided by a reward function that…

Safety in reinforcement learning (RL) is a key property in both training and execution in many domains such as autonomous driving or finance. In this paper, we formalize it with a constrained RL formulation in the distributional RL setting.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Jianyi Zhang , Paul Weng

The deployment of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real-world applications is constrained by its failure to satisfy safety criteria. Existing Safe Reinforcement Learning (SafeRL) methods, which rely on cost functions to enforce safety, often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Weidong Huang , Jiaming Ji , Chunhe Xia , Borong Zhang , Yaodong Yang