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Related papers: Shielded Reinforcement Learning for Hybrid Systems

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Reinforcement learning algorithms discover policies that maximize reward, but do not necessarily guarantee safety during learning or execution phases. We introduce a new approach to learn optimal policies while enforcing properties…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2017-09-05 Mohammed Alshiekh , Roderick Bloem , Ruediger Ehlers , Bettina Könighofer , Scott Niekum , Ufuk Topcu

Erroneous behaviour in safety critical real-time systems may inflict serious consequences. In this paper, we show how to synthesize timed shields from timed safety properties given as timed automata. A timed shield enforces the safety of a…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-07-01 Roderick Bloem , Peter Gjøl Jensen , Bettina Könighofer , Kim Guldstrand Larsen , Florian Lorber , Alexander Palmisano

In this paper, we propose a method to develop trustworthy reinforcement learning systems. To ensure safety especially during exploration, we automatically synthesize a correct-by-construction runtime enforcer, called a shield, that blocks…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-12-18 Bettina Könighofer , Julian Rudolf , Alexander Palmisano , Martin Tappler , Roderick Bloem

Designing Reinforcement Learning (RL) solutions for real-life problems remains a significant challenge. A major area of concern is safety. "Shielding" is a popular technique to enforce safety in RL by turning user-defined safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-05-31 Alexander Politowicz , Sahisnu Mazumder , Bing Liu

Obtaining safety guarantees for reinforcement learning is a major challenge to achieve applicability for real-world tasks. Safety shields extend standard reinforcement learning and achieve hard safety guarantees. However, existing safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Jin Pin , Krasowski Hanna , Vanneaux Elena

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has been increasingly used in a wide range of safety-critical applications, which require guaranteed safety (e.g., no unsafe states are ever visited) during the learning process.Unfortunately,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-03 Ingy Elsayed-Aly , Suda Bharadwaj , Christopher Amato , Rüdiger Ehlers , Ufuk Topcu , Lu Feng

Cyber-physical systems are often safety-critical in that violations of safety properties may lead to catastrophes. We propose a method to enforce the safety of systems with real-valued signals by synthesizing a runtime enforcer called the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-08-16 Meng Wu , Jingbo Wang , Jyotirmoy Deshmukh , Chao Wang

Safe exploration is a common problem in reinforcement learning (RL) that aims to prevent agents from making disastrous decisions while exploring their environment. A family of approaches to this problem assume domain knowledge in the form…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-08-24 Steven Carr , Nils Jansen , Sebastian Junges , Ufuk Topcu

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been successfully applied to a variety of robotics applications, where it outperforms classical methods. However, the safety aspect of RL and the transfer to the real world remain an open challenge. A…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-04-21 Murad Dawood , Ahmed Shokry , Maren Bennewitz

A major challenge to deploying cyber-physical systems with learning-enabled controllers is to ensure their safety, especially in the face of changing environments that necessitate runtime knowledge acquisition. Model-checking and automated…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-02-27 Yao Feng , Jun Zhu , André Platzer , Jonathan Laurent

This paper targets the efficient construction of a safety shield for decision making in scenarios that incorporate uncertainty. Markov decision processes (MDPs) are prominent models to capture such planning problems. Reinforcement learning…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-11-26 Nils Jansen , Bettina Könighofer , Sebastian Junges , Alexandru C. Serban , Roderick Bloem

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

It is challenging to use reinforcement learning (RL) in cyber-physical systems due to the lack of safety guarantees during learning. Although there have been various proposals to reduce undesired behaviors during learning, most of these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-07-28 Masaki Waga , Ezequiel Castellano , Sasinee Pruekprasert , Stefan Klikovits , Toru Takisaka , Ichiro Hasuo

Safety is still one of the major research challenges in reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we address the problem of how to avoid safety violations of RL agents during exploration in probabilistic and partially unknown…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Martin Tappler , Stefan Pranger , Bettina Könighofer , Edi Muškardin , Roderick Bloem , Kim Larsen

Reinforcement learning has been established over the past decade as an effective tool to find optimal control policies for dynamical systems, with recent focus on approaches that guarantee safety during the learning and/or execution phases.…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-06 S M Nahid Mahmud , Scott A Nivison , Zachary I. Bell , Rushikesh Kamalapurkar

This paper targets control problems that exhibit specific safety and performance requirements. In particular, the aim is to ensure that an agent, operating under uncertainty, will at runtime strictly adhere to such requirements. Previous…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2020-10-09 Stefan Pranger , Bettina Könighofer , Martin Tappler , Martin Deixelberger , Nils Jansen , Roderick Bloem

In real-life scenarios, a Reinforcement Learning (RL) agent aiming to maximise their reward, must often also behave in a safe manner, including at training time. Thus, much attention in recent years has been given to Safe RL, where an agent…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-26 Edwin Hamel-De le Court , Francesco Belardinelli , Alexander W. Goodall

Agents operating in physical environments need to be able to handle delays in the input and output signals since neither data transmission nor sensing or actuating the environment are instantaneous. Shields are correct-by-construction…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-07-06 Filip Cano Córdoba , Alexander Palmisano , Martin Fränzle , Roderick Bloem , Bettina Könighofer

There has been significant recent interest in devising verification techniques for learning-enabled controllers (LECs) that manage safety-critical systems. Given the opacity and lack of interpretability of the neural policies that govern…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-10-12 Zikang Xiong , Suresh Jagannathan

The deployment of robots in uncontrolled environments requires them to operate robustly under previously unseen scenarios, like irregular terrain and wind conditions. Unfortunately, while rigorous safety frameworks from robust optimal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-11 Kai-Chieh Hsu , Duy Phuong Nguyen , Jaime Fernández Fisac
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