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During initial iterations of training in most Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms, agents perform a significant number of random exploratory steps. In the real world, this can limit the practicality of these algorithms as it can lead to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-17 Ashish Kumar Jayant , Shalabh Bhatnagar

Safety in reinforcement learning (RL) is a key property in both training and execution in many domains such as autonomous driving or finance. In this paper, we formalize it with a constrained RL formulation in the distributional RL setting.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Jianyi Zhang , Paul Weng

Sequential decision making using Markov Decision Process underpins many realworld applications. Both model-based and model free methods have achieved strong results in these settings. However, real-world tasks must balance reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Janaka Chathuranga Brahmanage , Akshat Kumar

Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a compelling data-driven paradigm for synthesizing controllers for complex systems when accurate physical models are unavailable; however, most existing control-oriented RL methods assume stationarity and,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Austin Coursey , Abel Diaz-Gonzalez , Marcos Quinones-Grueiro , Gautam Biswas

Reinforcement learning (RL) has revolutionized decision-making across a wide range of domains over the past few decades. Yet, deploying RL policies in real-world scenarios presents the crucial challenge of ensuring safety. Traditional safe…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-26 Lunet Yifru , Ali Baheri

Despite the many recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL), the question of learning policies that robustly satisfy state constraints under unknown disturbances remains open. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on achieving…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-23 Pierre-François Massiani , Alexander von Rohr , Lukas Haverbeck , Sebastian Trimpe

Constrained Reinforcement Learning (RL) aims to maximize the return while adhering to predefined constraint limits, which represent domain-specific safety requirements. In continuous control settings, where learning agents govern system…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-12 Somnath Hazra , Pallab Dasgupta , Soumyajit Dey

It is quite challenging to ensure the safety of reinforcement learning (RL) agents in an unknown and stochastic environment under hard constraints that require the system state not to reach certain specified unsafe regions. Many popular…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2023-06-14 Yixuan Wang , Simon Sinong Zhan , Ruochen Jiao , Zhilu Wang , Wanxin Jin , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Chao Huang , Qi Zhu

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

This paper presents a safe learning-based eco-driving framework tailored for mixed traffic flows, which aims to optimize energy efficiency while guaranteeing safety during real-system operations. Even though reinforcement learning (RL) is…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-02-01 Ke Lu , Dongjun Li , Qun Wang , Kaidi Yang , Lin Zhao , Ziyou Song

Reinforcement Learning (RL) has proven a stunning ability to learn optimal policies from data without any prior knowledge on the process. The main drawback of RL is that it is typically very difficult to guarantee stability and safety. On…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-05-12 Mario Zanon , Vyacheslav Kungurtsev , Sébastien Gros

This paper proposes a safe reinforcement learning (RL) framework based on forward-invariance-induced action-space design. The control problem is cast as a Markov decision process, but instead of relying on runtime shielding or penalty-based…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-10 Chieh Tsai , Muhammad Junayed Hasan Zahed , Salim Hariri , Hossein Rastgoftar

Many physical systems have underlying safety considerations that require that the policy employed ensures the satisfaction of a set of constraints. The analytical formulation usually takes the form of a Constrained Markov Decision Process…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-03-03 Aria HasanzadeZonuzy , Archana Bura , Dileep Kalathil , Srinivas Shakkottai

Safe offline RL is a promising way to bypass risky online interactions towards safe policy learning. Most existing methods only enforce soft constraints, i.e., constraining safety violations in expectation below thresholds predetermined.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-22 Yinan Zheng , Jianxiong Li , Dongjie Yu , Yujie Yang , Shengbo Eben Li , Xianyuan Zhan , Jingjing Liu

In safe offline reinforcement learning (RL), the objective is to develop a policy that maximizes cumulative rewards while strictly adhering to safety constraints, utilizing only offline data. Traditional methods often face difficulties in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-11 Prajwal Koirala , Zhanhong Jiang , Soumik Sarkar , Cody Fleming

We consider primal-dual-based reinforcement learning (RL) in episodic constrained Markov decision processes (CMDPs) with non-stationary objectives and constraints, which plays a central role in ensuring the safety of RL in time-varying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-22 Yuhao Ding , Javad Lavaei

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has had success across various domains, but applying it to environments with constraints remains challenging due to poor sample efficiency and slow convergence. Recent literature explored incorporating…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-06 Mirco Theile , Lukas Dirnberger , Raphael Trumpp , Marco Caccamo , Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli

A popular framework for enforcing safe actions in Reinforcement Learning (RL) is Constrained RL, where trajectory based constraints on expected cost (or other cost measures) are employed to enforce safety and more importantly these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Huy Hoang , Tien Mai , Pradeep Varakantham

Replicability is a fundamental challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), as RL algorithms are empirically observed to be unstable and sensitive to variations in training conditions. To formally address this issue, we study \emph{list…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Bohan Zhang , Michael Chen , A. Pavan , N. V. Vinodchandran , Lin F. Yang , Ruosong Wang

Despite the tremendous success of Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms in simulation environments, applying RL to real-world applications still faces many challenges. A major concern is safety, in another word, constraint satisfaction.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-07-04 Weiye Zhao , Tairan He , Rui Chen , Tianhao Wei , Changliu Liu