Related papers: Learning safety critics via a non-contractive bina…
Real-world reinforcement learning (RL) problems often demand that agents behave safely by obeying a set of designed constraints. We address the challenge of safe RL by coupling a safety guide based on model predictive control (MPC) with a…
We show that several major algorithms of reinforcement learning (RL) fit into the framework of categorical cybernetics, that is to say, parametrised bidirectional processes. We build on our previous work in which we show that value…
While conventional reinforcement learning focuses on designing agents that can perform one task, meta-learning aims, instead, to solve the problem of designing agents that can generalize to different tasks (e.g., environments, obstacles,…
We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) framework under a broad class of risk objectives, characterized by convex scoring functions. This class covers many common risk measures, such as variance, Expected Shortfall, entropic Value-at-Risk,…
We consider the problem of Reinforcement Learning for nonlinear stochastic dynamical systems. We show that in the RL setting, there is an inherent ``Curse of Variance" in addition to Bellman's infamous ``Curse of Dimensionality", in…
Learning and synthesizing stabilizing controllers for unknown nonlinear control systems is a challenging problem for real-world and industrial applications. Koopman operator theory allows one to analyze nonlinear systems through the lens of…
Control of non-episodic, finite-horizon dynamical systems with uncertain dynamics poses a tough and elementary case of the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Bayesian reinforcement learning, reasoning about the effect of actions and future…
Safety is a primary concern when applying reinforcement learning to real-world control tasks, especially in the presence of external disturbances. However, existing safe reinforcement learning algorithms rarely account for external…
This paper studies safe Reinforcement Learning (safe RL) with linear function approximation and under hard instantaneous constraints where unsafe actions must be avoided at each step. Existing studies have considered safe RL with hard…
In this paper we consider a broad class of infinite horizon discrete-time optimal control models that involve a nonnegative cost function and an affine mapping in their dynamic programming equation. They include as special cases classical…
This paper presents the concept of an adaptive safe padding that forces Reinforcement Learning (RL) to synthesise optimal control policies while ensuring safety during the learning process. Policies are synthesised to satisfy a goal,…
Designing controllers that accomplish tasks while guaranteeing safety constraints remains a significant challenge. We often want an agent to perform well in a nominal task, such as environment exploration, while ensuring it can avoid unsafe…
Offline reinforcement learning and offline inverse reinforcement learning aim to recover near-optimal value functions or reward models from a fixed batch of logged trajectories, yet current practice still struggles to enforce Bellman…
This paper presents a learning-based optimal control framework for safety-critical systems with parametric uncertainties, addressing both time-triggered and self-triggered controller implementations. First, we develop a robust control…
Single-domain offline reinforcement learning (RL) often suffers from limited data coverage, while cross-domain offline RL handles this issue by leveraging additional data from other domains with dynamics shifts. However, existing studies…
Representation learning is critical to the empirical and theoretical success of reinforcement learning. However, many existing methods are induced from model-learning aspects, misaligning them with the RL task in hand. This work introduces…
We propose a new reachability learning framework for high-dimensional nonlinear systems, focusing on reach-avoid problems. These problems require computing the reach-avoid set, which ensures that all its elements can safely reach a target…
For all its successes, Reinforcement Learning (RL) still struggles to deliver formal guarantees on the closed-loop behavior of the learned policy. Among other things, guaranteeing the safety of RL with respect to safety-critical systems is…
Safe reinforcement learning (RL) is a standard paradigm for safety-critical decision making. However, real-world safety constraints can be complex, subjective, and even hard to explicitly specify. Existing works on constraint inference rely…
Offline Preference-based Reinforcement Learning (PbRL) learns rewards and policies aligned with human preferences without the need for extensive reward engineering and direct interaction with human annotators. However, ensuring safety…