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Related papers: Safe reinforcement learning in uncertain contexts

200 papers

Multi-task reinforcement learning trains generalist policies that can execute multiple tasks. While recent years have seen significant progress, existing approaches rarely provide formal performance guarantees, which are indispensable when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Yannik Schnitzer , Mathias Jackermeier , Alessandro Abate , David Parker

A key challenge in the field of reinforcement learning is to develop agents that behave cautiously in novel situations. It is generally impossible to anticipate all situations that an autonomous system may face or what behavior would best…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-14 Montaser Mohammedalamen , Dustin Morrill , Alexander Sieusahai , Yash Satsangi , Michael Bowling

The deployment of autonomous robots in safety-critical applications requires safety guarantees. Provably safe reinforcement learning is an active field of research that aims to provide such guarantees using safeguards. These safeguards…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Tim Walter , Hannah Markgraf , Jonathan Külz , Matthias Althoff

Vanilla Reinforcement Learning (RL) can efficiently solve complex tasks but does not provide any guarantees on system behavior. To bridge this gap, we propose a three-step safe RL procedure for continuous action spaces that provides…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-09-29 Hanna Krasowski , Prithvi Akella , Aaron D. Ames , Matthias Althoff

The primary goal of reinforcement learning is to develop decision-making policies that prioritize optimal performance, frequently without considering safety. In contrast, safe reinforcement learning seeks to reduce or avoid unsafe behavior.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Zahra Shahrooei , Ali Baheri

Contextual bandit learning is a reinforcement learning problem where the learner repeatedly receives a set of features (context), takes an action and receives a reward based on the action and context. We consider this problem under a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2012-03-05 Alekh Agarwal , Miroslav Dudík , Satyen Kale , John Langford , Robert E. Schapire

The utility of learning a dynamics/world model of the environment in reinforcement learning has been shown in a many ways. When using neural networks, however, these models suffer catastrophic forgetting when learned in a lifelong or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-12 Nicholas Ketz , Soheil Kolouri , Praveen Pilly

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

In reinforcement learning (RL), an autonomous agent learns to perform complex tasks by maximizing an exogenous reward signal while interacting with its environment. In real-world applications, test conditions may differ substantially from…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-10-30 Matteo Turchetta , Andreas Krause , Sebastian Trimpe

In learning problems, the noise inherent to the task at hand hinders the possibility to infer without a certain degree of uncertainty. Quantifying this uncertainty, regardless of its wide use, assumes high relevance for security-sensitive…

Many sequential decision-making problems that are currently automated, such as those in manufacturing or recommender systems, operate in an environment where there is either little uncertainty, or zero risk of catastrophe. As companies and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Marc Rigter

To perform robot manipulation tasks, a low-dimensional state of the environment typically needs to be estimated. However, designing a state estimator can sometimes be difficult, especially in environments with deformable objects. An…

Robotics · Computer Science 2019-07-16 Xingyu Lin , Harjatin Singh Baweja , David Held

The paper considers the problem of multi-objective decision support when outcomes are uncertain. We extend the concept of Pareto-efficient decisions to take into account the uncertainty of decision outcomes across varying contexts. This…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-10-20 Sofia Ek , Dave Zachariah , Petre Stoica

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been shown to be effective in many scenarios. However, it typically requires the exploration of a sufficiently large number of state-action pairs, some of which may be unsafe. Consequently, its application to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-06-24 Yousef Emam , Gennaro Notomista , Paul Glotfelter , Zsolt Kira , Magnus Egerstedt

This paper addresses the problem of maintaining safety during training in Reinforcement Learning (RL), such that the safety constraint violations are bounded at any point during learning. In a variety of RL applications the safety of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Rohan Mitta , Hosein Hasanbeig , Jun Wang , Daniel Kroening , Yiannis Kantaros , Alessandro Abate

Reinforcement learning (RL) agents need to explore their environments in order to learn optimal policies. In many environments and tasks, safety is of critical importance. The widespread use of simulators offers a number of advantages,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-01 Luka Kovač , Igor Farkaš

Many real-world domains require safe decision making in uncertain environments. In this work, we introduce a deep reinforcement learning framework for approaching this important problem. We consider a distribution over transition models,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-27 James Queeney , Mouhacine Benosman

Safety guarantees are a prerequisite to the deployment of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in safety-critical tasks. Often, deployment environments exhibit non-stationary dynamics or are subject to changing performance goals, requiring…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-13 Maksim Anisimov , Francesco Belardinelli , Matthew Wicker

This tutorial paper focuses on safe physics-informed machine learning in the context of dynamics and control, providing a comprehensive overview of how to integrate physical models and safety guarantees. As machine learning techniques…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-06-16 Jan Drgona , Truong X. Nghiem , Thomas Beckers , Mahyar Fazlyab , Enrique Mallada , Colin Jones , Draguna Vrabie , Steven L. Brunton , Rolf Findeisen

Although autonomous underwater vehicles promise the capability of marine ecosystem monitoring, their deployment is fundamentally limited by the difficulty of controlling vehicles under highly uncertain and non-stationary underwater…