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Neural networks have recently become popular for a wide variety of uses, but have seen limited application in safety-critical domains such as robotics near and around humans. This is because it remains an open challenge to train a neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-19 Long Kiu Chung , Adam Dai , Derek Knowles , Shreyas Kousik , Grace X. Gao

Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) has shown promise in addressing complex robotic challenges. In real-world applications, RL is often accompanied by failsafe controllers as a last resort to avoid catastrophic events. While necessary for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-09-26 Jakob Thumm , Guillaume Pelat , Matthias Althoff

Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have achieved remarkable performance in decision making and control tasks due to their ability to reason about long-term, cumulative reward using trial and error. However, during RL training, applying…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-03-03 Yifei Simon Shao , Chao Chen , Shreyas Kousik , Ram Vasudevan

Safety is a critical feature of controller design for physical systems. When designing control policies, several approaches to guarantee this aspect of autonomy have been proposed, such as robust controllers or control barrier functions.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-26 Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Santiago Paternain

Reinforcement learning is a general methodology of adaptive optimal control that has attracted much attention in various fields ranging from video game industry to robot manipulators. Despite its remarkable performance demonstrations, plain…

Dynamical Systems · Mathematics 2022-06-14 Pavel Osinenko , Grigory Yaremenko , Ilya Osokin

Ensuring safety is important for the practical deployment of reinforcement learning (RL). Various challenges must be addressed, such as handling stochasticity in the environments, providing rigorous guarantees of persistent state-wise…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-26 Milan Ganai , Zheng Gong , Chenning Yu , Sylvia Herbert , Sicun Gao

The growing trend of fledgling reinforcement learning systems making their way into real-world applications has been accompanied by growing concerns for their safety and robustness. In recent years, a variety of approaches have been put…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Chloe He , Borja G. Leon , Francesco Belardinelli

Reinforcement learning has been successfully used to solve difficult tasks in complex unknown environments. However, these methods typically do not provide any safety guarantees during the learning process. This is particularly problematic,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2019-07-02 Torsten Koller , Felix Berkenkamp , Matteo Turchetta , Joschka Boedecker , Andreas Krause

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

We consider the problem of reinforcement learning under safety requirements, in which an agent is trained to complete a given task, typically formalized as the maximization of a reward signal over time, while concurrently avoiding…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-09-25 Tu-Hoa Pham , Giovanni De Magistris , Don Joven Agravante , Subhajit Chaudhury , Asim Munawar , Ryuki Tachibana

Imitation learning (IL) has shown great success in learning complex robot manipulation tasks. However, there remains a need for practical safety methods to justify widespread deployment. In particular, it is important to certify that a…

Reinforcement learning has shown promise for automating power-grid operation tasks such as topology control and congestion management. However, its deployment in real-world power systems remains limited by strict safety requirements,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-16 Gitesh Malik

This paper presents a safety-critical reinforcement learning framework for nonlinear dynamical systems with continuous state and input spaces operating under explicit physical constraints. Hard safety constraints are enforced independently…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-02-05 Hossein Rastgoftar

Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown great potential for solving complex tasks in a variety of domains. However, applying RL to safety-critical systems in the real-world is not easy as many algorithms are sample-inefficient and maximising…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-02 Alexander W. Goodall , Francesco Belardinelli

There have been numerous advances in reinforcement learning, but the typically unconstrained exploration of the learning process prevents the adoption of these methods in many safety critical applications. Recent work in safe reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-02 David Isele , Alireza Nakhaei , Kikuo Fujimura

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

As safety violations can lead to severe consequences in real-world robotic applications, the increasing deployment of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in robotic domains has propelled the study of safe exploration for reinforcement learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-09-21 Hanping Zhang , Yuhong Guo

Unseen shifts in environment dynamics, driven by hidden parameters such as friction or gravity, create a challenge for maintaining safety. We address this challenge by proposing Adaptive Shielding, a framework for safe reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Minjae Kwon , Tyler Ingebrand , Ufuk Topcu , Lu Feng

Safety is one of the key issues preventing the deployment of reinforcement learning techniques in real-world robots. While most approaches in the Safe Reinforcement Learning area do not require prior knowledge of constraints and robot…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-09-24 Jonas Günster , Puze Liu , Jan Peters , Davide Tateo

Autonomous systems that rely on learned perception can make unsafe decisions when sensor readings are misclassified. We study shielding for this setting: given a proposed action, a shield blocks actions that could violate safety. We…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-23 William Scarbro , Ravi Mangal