Related papers: Reinforcement Learning for Safe Robot Control usin…

Control barrier functions (CBFs) are widely used in safety-critical controllers. However, constructing a valid CBF is challenging, especially under nonlinear or non-convex constraints and for high relative degree systems. Meanwhile, finding…

This paper studies the control synthesis of motion planning subject to uncertainties. The uncertainties are considered in robot motions and environment properties, giving rise to the probabilistic labeled Markov decision process (PL-MDP). A…

Controlling contact forces during interactions is critical for locomotion and manipulation tasks. While sim-to-real reinforcement learning (RL) has succeeded in many contact-rich problems, current RL methods achieve forceful interactions…

While reinforcement learning (RL) has the potential to enable robots to autonomously acquire a wide range of skills, in practice, RL usually requires manual, per-task engineering of reward functions, especially in real world settings where…

This paper studies the problem of utilizing data-driven adaptive control techniques to guarantee stability and safety of uncertain nonlinear systems with high relative degree. We first introduce the notion of a High Order Robust Adaptive…

Safe Reinforcement Learning (RL) plays an important role in applying RL algorithms to safety-critical real-world applications, addressing the trade-off between maximizing rewards and adhering to safety constraints. This work introduces a…

This paper presents a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm to synthesize a control policy that maximizes the satisfaction probability of linear temporal logic (LTL) specifications. Due to the consideration of environment and…

We introduce High-Relative Degree Stochastic Control Lyapunov functions and Barrier Functions as a means to ensure asymptotic stability of the system and incorporate state dependent high relative degree safety constraints on a non-linear…

Robust control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled mechanism for smooth safety enforcement under worst-case disturbances. However, existing approaches typically rely on explicit, closed-form structure in the dynamics (e.g.,…

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.…

This paper presents a novel task-priority control framework for redundant robotic systems based on a hierarchy of control Lyapunov function (CLF) and control barrier function (CBF) based quadratic programs (QPs). The proposed method…

Collision avoidance is key for mobile robots and agents to operate safely in the real world. In this work we present SAFER, an efficient and effective collision avoidance system that is able to improve safety by correcting the control…

Training-time safety violations have been a major concern when we deploy reinforcement learning algorithms in the real world. This paper explores the possibility of safe RL algorithms with zero training-time safety violations in the…

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been widely used in decision-making and control tasks, but the risk is very high for the agent in the training process due to the requirements of interaction with the environment, which seriously limits its…

We introduce a novel method for mobile robot navigation in dynamic, unknown environments, leveraging onboard sensing and distributionally robust optimization to impose probabilistic safety constraints. Our method introduces a…

In this paper, a novel robust tracking control law is proposed for constrained robots under unknown stiffness environment. The stability and the robustness of the controller are proved using a Lyapunov-based approach where the relationship…

Ensuring robot safety in complex environments is a difficult task due to actuation limits, such as torque bounds. This paper presents a safety-critical control framework that leverages learning-based switching between multiple backup…

Reinforcement learning (RL) often necessitates a meticulous Markov Decision Process (MDP) design tailored to each task. This work aims to address this challenge by proposing a systematic approach to behavior synthesis and control for…

The applicability of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in real-world domains often requires adherence to safety constraints, a need difficult to address given the asymptotic nature of the classic RL optimization objective. In contrast…

As more inverter-connected renewable resources are integrated into the grid, frequency stability may degrade because of the reduction in mechanical inertia and damping. A common approach to mitigate this degradation in performance is to use…