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Related papers: Shielded Reinforcement Learning for Hybrid Systems

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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

Recent progress in AI and Reinforcement learning has shown great success in solving complex problems with high dimensional state spaces. However, most of these successes have been primarily in simulated environments where failure is of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2019-03-25 Bharat Prakash , Mohit Khatwani , Nicholas Waytowich , Tinoosh Mohsenin

Continual learning under adversarial conditions remains an open problem, as existing methods often compromise either robustness, scalability, or both. We propose a novel framework that integrates Interval Bound Propagation (IBP) with a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Patryk Krukowski , Łukasz Gorczyca , Piotr Helm , Kamil Książek , Przemysław Spurek

We propose a simple, practical and intuitive approach to improve the performance of a conventional controller in uncertain environments using deep reinforcement learning while maintaining safe operation. Our approach is motivated by the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-07 Tom Staessens , Tom Lefebvre , Guillaume Crevecoeur

This paper proposes a framework for safe reinforcement learning that can handle stochastic nonlinear dynamical systems. We focus on the setting where the nominal dynamics are known, and are subject to additive stochastic disturbances with…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-01-27 Shuo Li , Osbert Bastani

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

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

Shielding is a prominent model-based technique to ensure safety of autonomous agents. Classical shielding aims to ensure that nothing bad ever happens and comes with strong guarantees about safety and maximal permissiveness. However,…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Linus Heck , Filip Macák , Roman Andriushchenko , Milan Češka , Sebastian Junges

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.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Wesley A. Suttle , Vipul K. Sharma , Krishna C. Kosaraju , S. Sivaranjani , Ji Liu , Vijay Gupta , Brian M. Sadler

Reinforcement learning agents in complex game environments often suffer from sparse rewards, training instability, and poor sample efficiency. This paper presents a hybrid training approach that combines offline imitation learning with…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-19 Thomas Ackermann , Moritz Spang , Hamza A. A. Gardi

Autonomous spacecraft control via Shielded Deep Reinforcement Learning (SDRL) has become a rapidly growing research area. However, the construction of shields and the definition of tasking remains informal, resulting in policies with no…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-15 Robert Reed , Hanspeter Schaub , Morteza Lahijanian

In recent years, Machine Learning (ML) models have achieved remarkable success in various domains. However, these models also tend to demonstrate unsafe behaviors, precluding their deployment in safety-critical systems. To cope with this…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-02-17 Andoni Rodriguez , Guy Amir , Davide Corsi , Cesar Sanchez , Guy Katz

Robot learning has produced remarkably effective ``black-box'' controllers for complex tasks such as dynamic locomotion on humanoids. Yet ensuring dynamic safety, i.e., constraint satisfaction, remains challenging for such policies.…

We consider the symbolic controller synthesis approach to enforce safety specifications on perturbed, nonlinear control systems. In general, in each state of the system several control values might be applicable to enforce the safety…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-12-15 Philipp J. Meyer , Matthias Rungger , Michael Luttenberger , Javier Esparza , Majid Zamani

Shield synthesis is an approach to enforce a set of safety-critical properties of a reactive system at runtime. A shield monitors the system and corrects any erroneous output values instantaneously. The shield deviates from the given…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2019-04-16 Laura Humphrey , Bettina Könighofer , Robert Könighofer , Ufuk Topcu

We consider the problem of reinforcement learning when provided with (1) a baseline control policy and (2) a set of constraints that the learner must satisfy. The baseline policy can arise from demonstration data or a teacher agent and may…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-07-13 Tsung-Yen Yang , Justinian Rosca , Karthik Narasimhan , Peter J. Ramadge

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a promising approach for deriving control policies for complex systems. As we show in two control problems, the derived policies from using the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) and Deep Q-Network (DQN)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-05 Jan de Priester , Ricardo G. Sanfelice , Nathan van de Wouw

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has shown promising results in the motion planning of manipulators. However, no method guarantees the safety of highly dynamic obstacles, such as humans, in RL-based manipulator control. This lack of formal…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-05-16 Jakob Thumm , Matthias Althoff

Hybrid dynamical systems are ubiquitous as practical robotic applications often involve both continuous states and discrete switchings. Safety is a primary concern for hybrid robotic systems. Existing safety-critical control approaches for…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-12-02 Shuo Yang , Yu Chen , Xiang Yin , George J. Pappas , Rahul Mangharam

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