English
Related papers

Related papers: Uniformly Safe RL with Objective Suppression for M…

200 papers

Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents can solve diverse tasks but often exhibit unsafe behavior. Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) address this by enforcing safety constraints, yet existing methods either sacrifice reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-18 Nikola Milosevic , Johannes Müller , Nico Scherf

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…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-24 Ze Gong , Pradeep Varakantham , Akshat Kumar

Constrained reinforcement learning is to maximize the expected reward subject to constraints on utilities/costs. However, the training environment may not be the same as the test one, due to, e.g., modeling error, adversarial attack,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-16 Yue Wang , Fei Miao , Shaofeng Zou

Practical reinforcement learning problems are often formulated as constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) problems, in which the agent has to maximize the expected return while satisfying a set of prescribed safety constraints. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-09-23 Shin-ichi Maeda , Hayato Watahiki , Shintarou Okada , Masanori Koyama

In standard reinforcement learning (RL), a learning agent seeks to optimize the overall reward. However, many key aspects of a desired behavior are more naturally expressed as constraints. For instance, the designer may want to limit the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-01-29 Sobhan Miryoosefi , Kianté Brantley , Hal Daumé , Miroslav Dudik , Robert Schapire

The safety of training task policies and their subsequent application using reinforcement learning (RL) methods has become a focal point in the field of safe RL. A central challenge in this area remains the establishment of theoretical…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-02 Chenggang Wang , Xinyi Wang , Yutong Dong , Lei Song , Xinping Guan

In this paper, we study the learning of safe policies in the setting of reinforcement learning problems. This is, we aim to control a Markov Decision Process (MDP) of which we do not know the transition probabilities, but we have access to…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-01-14 Santiago Paternain , Miguel Calvo-Fullana , Luiz F. O. Chamon , Alejandro Ribeiro

Offline safe reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising approach for learning safe behaviors without engaging in risky online interactions with the environment. Most existing methods in offline safe RL rely on cost constraints…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-22 Ze Gong , Akshat Kumar , Pradeep Varakantham

Model predictive control (MPC) is widely used for motion planning, particularly in autonomous driving. Real-time capability of the planner requires utilizing convex approximation of optimal control problems (OCPs) for the planner. However,…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Johannes Fischer , Marlon Steiner , Ömer Sahin Tas , Christoph Stiller

Constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) model scenarios of sequential decision making with multiple objectives that are increasingly important in many applications. However, the model is often unknown and must be learned online while…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-30 Krishna C Kalagarla , Rahul Jain , Pierluigi Nuzzo

This paper studies constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with constraints against stochastic thresholds, aiming at safety of reinforcement learning in unknown and uncertain environments. We leverage a Growing-Window estimator…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-25 Qian Zuo , Fengxiang He

Ensuring safety is a foundational requirement for large language models (LLMs). Achieving an appropriate balance between enhancing the utility of model outputs and mitigating their potential for harm is a complex and persistent challenge.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Kartik Pandit , Sourav Ganguly , Arnesh Banerjee , Shaahin Angizi , Arnob Ghosh

Autonomous driving involves multiple, often conflicting objectives such as safety, efficiency, and comfort. In reinforcement learning (RL), these objectives are typically combined through weighted summation, which collapses their relative…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Ahmed Abouelazm , Jonas Michel , Daniel Bogdoll , Philip Schörner , J. Marius Zöllner

We study the problem of safe offline reinforcement learning (RL), the goal is to learn a policy that maximizes long-term reward while satisfying safety constraints given only offline data, without further interaction with the environment.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-04-11 Haoran Xu , Xianyuan Zhan , Xiangyu Zhu

Constrained decision-making is essential for designing safe policies in real-world control systems, yet simulated environments often fail to capture real-world adversities. We consider the problem of learning a policy that will maximize the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Sourav Ganguly , Kishan Panaganti , Arnob Ghosh , Adam Wierman

Constrained optimization provides a common framework for dealing with conflicting objectives in reinforcement learning (RL). In most of these settings, the objectives (and constraints) are expressed though the expected accumulated reward.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Jane H. Lee , Baturay Saglam , Spyridon Pougkakiotis , Amin Karbasi , Dionysis Kalogerias

Optimal control strategies are often combined with safety certificates to ensure both performance and safety in safety-critical systems. A prominent example is combining Model Predictive Control (MPC) with Control Barrier Functions (CBF).…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-05 Kerim Dzhumageldyev , Filippo Airaldi , Azita Dabiri

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) trains a policy to maximize the task reward while satisfying safety constraints. While prior works focus on the performance optimality, we find that the optimal solutions of many safe RL problems are not…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Zuxin Liu , Zijian Guo , Zhepeng Cen , Huan Zhang , Jie Tan , Bo Li , Ding Zhao

Lagrangian methods are widely used algorithms for constrained optimization problems, but their learning dynamics exhibit oscillations and overshoot which, when applied to safe reinforcement learning, leads to constraint-violating behavior…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-07-09 Adam Stooke , Joshua Achiam , Pieter Abbeel

Safe reinforcement learning (RL) seeks to mitigate unsafe behaviors that arise from exploration during training by reducing constraint violations while maintaining task performance. Existing approaches typically rely on a single policy to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Murad Dawood , Usama Ahmed Siddiquie , Shahram Khorshidi , Maren Bennewitz