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We propose a computationally efficient approach to safe reinforcement learning (RL) for frequency regulation in power systems with high levels of variable renewable energy resources. The approach draws on set-theoretic control techniques to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-03-24 Daniel Tabas , Baosen Zhang

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) trains a policy to maximize the task reward while satisfying safety constraints. While prior works focus on the performance optimality, we find that the optimal solutions of many safe RL problems are not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Zuxin Liu , Zijian Guo , Zhepeng Cen , Huan Zhang , Jie Tan , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

In many applications of Reinforcement Learning (RL), it is critically important that the algorithm performs safely, such that instantaneous hard constraints are satisfied at each step, and unsafe states and actions are avoided. However,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-10 Ming Shi , Yingbin Liang , Ness Shroff

Ensuring safety in autonomous systems with vision-based control remains a critical challenge due to the high dimensionality of image inputs and the fact that the relationship between true system state and its visual manifestation is…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Xinhang Ma , Junlin Wu , Hussein Sibai , Yiannis Kantaros , Yevgeniy Vorobeychik

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a well-established framework for sequential decision-making in complex environments. However, state-of-the-art Deep RL (DRL) algorithms typically require large training datasets and often struggle to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-13 Celeste Veronese , Alessandro Farinelli , Daniele Meli

Safety is of great importance in multi-robot navigation problems. In this paper, we propose a control barrier function (CBF) based optimizer that ensures robot safety with both high probability and flexibility, using only sensor…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-09-17 Yuxiang Cui , Longzhong Lin , Xiaolong Huang , Dongkun Zhang , Yue Wang , Rong Xiong

Robust control is a core approach for controlling systems with performance guarantees that are robust to modeling error, and is widely used in real-world systems. However, current robust control approaches can only handle small system…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-06-08 Dimitar Ho , Hoang M. Le , John C. Doyle , Yisong Yue

We propose a novel class of risk-aware control barrier functions (RA-CBFs) for the control of stochastic safety-critical systems. Leveraging a result from the stochastic level-crossing literature, we deviate from the martingale theory that…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-08-22 Mitchell Black , Georgios Fainekos , Bardh Hoxha , Danil Prokhorov , Dimitra Panagou

We extend the learning from demonstration paradigm by providing a method for learning unknown constraints shared across tasks, using demonstrations of the tasks, their cost functions, and knowledge of the system dynamics and control…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-02-22 Glen Chou , Dmitry Berenson , Necmiye Ozay

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of significant research interest, and safe RL in particular is attracting attention due to its ability to handle safety-driven constraints that are crucial for real-world applications. This work…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-05-26 Song Bo , Bernard T. Agyeman , Xunyuan Yin , Jinfeng Liu

Safety and stability are two critical concerns in pursuit-evasion (PE) problems in an obstacle-rich environment. Most existing works combine control barrier functions (CBFs) and reinforcement learning (RL) to provide an efficient and safe…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-07-29 Xinyang Wang , Hongwei Zhang , Jun Xu , Shimin Wang , Martin Guay

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms have recently made significant strides in improving network performance. Nonetheless, their practical use is still limited in the absence of safe exploration and safe decision-making. In the…

Networking and Internet Architecture · Computer Science 2024-01-12 Lam Dinh , Pham Tran Anh Quang , Jérémie Leguay

Learning-based methodologies increasingly find applications in safety-critical domains like autonomous driving and medical robotics. Due to the rare nature of dangerous events, real-world testing is prohibitively expensive and unscalable.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-10 Aman Sinha , Matthew O'Kelly , Russ Tedrake , John Duchi

This work addresses the challenge of safe and efficient mobile robot navigation in complex dynamic environments with concave moving obstacles. Reactive safe controllers like Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) design obstacle avoidance…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Yifan Xue , Ze Zhang , Knut Åkesson , Nadia Figueroa

Reinforcement learning algorithms are typically designed for discrete-time dynamics, even though the underlying real-world control systems are often continuous in time. In this paper, we study the problem of continuous-time reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Klemens Iten , Lenart Treven , Bhavya Sukhija , Florian Dörfler , Andreas Krause

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Donggeon David Oh , Duy P. Nguyen , Haimin Hu , Jaime F. Fisac

Ensuring robust safety measures across a wide range of scenarios is crucial for user-facing systems. While Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate valuable data for safety measures, they often exhibit distributional biases, focusing on…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Sabit Hassan , Anthony Sicilia , Malihe Alikhani

Imitation of expert behaviour is a highly desirable and safe approach to the problem of sequential decision making. We provide an easy-to-implement, novel algorithm for imitation learning under a strict data paradigm, in which the agent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Matthew Smith , Lucas Maystre , Zhenwen Dai , Kamil Ciosek

As a paradigm for sequential decision making in unknown environments, reinforcement learning (RL) has received a flurry of attention in recent years. However, the explosion of model complexity in emerging applications and the presence of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-07-22 Yuejie Chi , Yuxin Chen , Yuting Wei

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is essentially a trial-and-error learning procedure which may cause unsafe behavior during the exploration-and-exploitation process. This hinders the application of RL to real-world control problems, especially…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-03 Yutong Li , Nan Li , H. Eric Tseng , Anouck Girard , Dimitar Filev , Ilya Kolmanovsky