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Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents can solve diverse tasks but often exhibit unsafe behavior. Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) address this by enforcing safety constraints, yet existing methods either sacrifice reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-18 Nikola Milosevic , Johannes Müller , Nico Scherf

Due to limited resources and public safety concerns, deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents for many cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous vehicles) are first trained in simulators. However, when deployed in real world environments,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-28 Gengyue Han , Yiheng Feng

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) agents accomplish given tasks while adhering to specific constraints. Employing constraints expressed via easily-understandable human language offers considerable potential for real-world applications due to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-16 Xingzhou Lou , Junge Zhang , Ziyan Wang , Kaiqi Huang , Yali Du

Shifting from traditional control strategies to Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) for legged robots poses inherent challenges, especially when addressing real-world physical constraints during training. While high-fidelity simulations…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-09-28 Joonho Lee , Lukas Schroth , Victor Klemm , Marko Bjelonic , Alexander Reske , Marco Hutter

Most reinforcement learning (RL) approaches for the decision-making of autonomous driving consider safety as a reward instead of a cost, which makes it hard to balance the tradeoff between safety and other objectives. Human risk preference…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-03-05 Yang Li , Shijie Yuan , Yuan Chang , Xiaolong Chen , Qisong Yang , Zhiyuan Yang , Hongmao Qin

This study proposes a safe and sample-efficient reinforcement learning (RL) framework to address two major challenges in developing applicable RL algorithms: satisfying safety constraints and efficiently learning with limited samples. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-28 Hongyi Chen , Changliu Liu

Constrained reinforcement learning is to maximize the expected reward subject to constraints on utilities/costs. However, the training environment may not be the same as the test one, due to, e.g., modeling error, adversarial attack,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-16 Yue Wang , Fei Miao , Shaofeng Zou

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…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-01-14 Santiago Paternain , Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Alejandro Ribeiro

This paper delves into the problem of safe reinforcement learning (RL) in a partially observable environment with the aim of achieving safe-reachability objectives. In traditional partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP),…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-04 Xiaoyuan Cheng , Boli Chen , Liz Varga , Yukun Hu

In this paper, we present an online reinforcement learning algorithm for constrained Markov decision processes with a safety constraint. Despite the necessary attention of the scientific community, considering stochastic stopping time, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-26 Abhijit Mazumdar , Rafal Wisniewski , Manuela L. Bujorianu

Meta-reinforcement learning has widely been used as a learning-to-learn framework to solve unseen tasks with limited experience. However, the aspect of constraint violations has not been adequately addressed in the existing works, making…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Vanshaj Khattar , Yuhao Ding , Bilgehan Sel , Javad Lavaei , Ming Jin

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown remarkable success in solving relatively complex tasks, yet the deployment of RL systems in real-world scenarios poses significant challenges related to safety and robustness. This paper aims to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-04-02 Taku Yamagata , Raul Santos-Rodriguez

Model-based Reinforcement Learning (MBRL) has shown many desirable properties for intelligent control tasks. However, satisfying safety and stability constraints during training and rollout remains an open question. We propose a new…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-05-28 Harry Zhang

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) aims to learn policies that satisfy certain constraints before deploying them to safety-critical applications. Previous primal-dual style approaches suffer from instability issues and lack optimality…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-20 Zuxin Liu , Zhepeng Cen , Vladislav Isenbaev , Wei Liu , Zhiwei Steven Wu , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

In this paper, we develop a safe decision-making method for self-driving cars in a multi-lane, single-agent setting. The proposed approach utilizes deep reinforcement learning (RL) to achieve a high-level policy for safe tactical…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-05-17 Arash Mohammadhasani , Hamed Mehrivash , Alan Lynch , Zhan Shu

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…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-23 Shin-ichi Maeda , Hayato Watahiki , Shintarou Okada , Masanori Koyama

Emerging applications in robotics and autonomous systems, such as autonomous driving and robotic surgery, often involve critical safety constraints that must be satisfied even when information about system models is limited. In this regard,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Subin Huh , Insoon Yang

This paper studies the constrained/safe reinforcement learning (RL) problem with sparse indicator signals for constraint violations. We propose a model-based approach to enable RL agents to effectively explore the environment with unknown…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-03-09 Zuxin Liu , Hongyi Zhou , Baiming Chen , Sicheng Zhong , Martial Hebert , Ding Zhao

This paper studies constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with constraints against stochastic thresholds, aiming at safety of reinforcement learning in unknown and uncertain environments. We leverage a Growing-Window estimator…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-25 Qian Zuo , Fengxiang He

Deploying deep reinforcement learning in safety-critical settings requires developing algorithms that obey hard constraints during exploration. This paper contributes a first approach toward enforcing formal safety constraints on end-to-end…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-07-03 Nathan Hunt , Nathan Fulton , Sara Magliacane , Nghia Hoang , Subhro Das , Armando Solar-Lezama