Related papers: Constrained Update Projection Approach to Safe Pol…
This paper proposes an off-policy risk-sensitive reinforcement learning based control framework for stabilization of a continuous-time nonlinear system that subjects to additive disturbances, input saturation, and state constraints. By…
We study reinforcement learning (RL) with linear function approximation. Existing algorithms for this problem only have high-probability regret and/or Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) sample complexity guarantees, which cannot guarantee…
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…
This paper introduces a flight envelope protection algorithm on a longitudinal axis that leverages reinforcement learning (RL). By considering limits on variables such as angle of attack, load factor, and pitch rate, the algorithm…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been shown to be effective in many scenarios. However, it typically requires the exploration of a sufficiently large number of state-action pairs, some of which may be unsafe. Consequently, its application to…
In this paper, we study reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to solve real-world decision problems with the objective of maximizing the long-term reward as well as satisfying cumulative constraints. We propose a novel first-order policy…
Evolutionary strategies have recently been shown to achieve competing levels of performance for complex optimization problems in reinforcement learning. In such problems, one often needs to optimize an objective function subject to a set of…
Entropy regularized algorithms such as Soft Q-learning and Soft Actor-Critic, recently showed state-of-the-art performance on a number of challenging reinforcement learning (RL) tasks. The regularized formulation modifies the standard RL…
Recent advances in robotic policy learning have enabled complex manipulation in real-world environments, yet the execution speed of these policies often lags behind hardware capabilities due to the cost of collecting faster demonstrations.…
Offline Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) learns rewards and policies aligned with human preferences without the need for extensive reward engineering and direct interaction with human annotators. However, ensuring safety…
We develop provably safe and convergent reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for control of nonlinear dynamical systems, bridging the gap between the hard safety guarantees of control theory and the convergence guarantees of RL theory.…
Safe reinforcement learning is extremely challenging--not only must the agent explore an unknown environment, it must do so while ensuring no safety constraint violations. We formulate this safe reinforcement learning (RL) problem using the…
In reinforcement learning, an agent attempts to learn high-performing behaviors through interacting with the environment, such behaviors are often quantified in the form of a reward function. However some aspects of behavior-such as ones…
Counterfactual learning to rank (CLTR) can be risky and, in various circumstances, can produce sub-optimal models that hurt performance when deployed. Safe CLTR was introduced to mitigate these risks when using inverse propensity scoring to…
This thesis develops theoretical frameworks and algorithms that advance constrained reinforcement learning (RL) across control, preference learning, and alignment of large language models. The first contribution addresses constrained Markov…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has recently impressed the world with stunning results in various applications. While the potential of RL is now well-established, many critical aspects still need to be tackled, including safety and stability…
High-level penetration of intermittent renewable energy sources (RESs) has introduced significant uncertainties into modern power systems. In order to rapidly and economically respond to the fluctuations of power system operating state,…
This paper proposes a safe reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm that approximately solves the state-constrained optimal control problem for continuous-time uncertain nonlinear systems. We formulate the safe RL problem as the minimization…
Reinforcement learning (RL) problems are fundamental in online decision-making and have been instrumental in finding an optimal policy for Markov decision processes (MDPs). Function approximations are usually deployed to handle large or…
In offline reinforcement learning (RL), we learn policies from fixed datasets without environment interaction. The major challenges are to provide guarantees on the (1) performance and (2) safety of the resulting policy. A technique called…