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Related papers: Progressive Safeguards for Safe and Model-Agnostic…

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In this paper, we present a safe deep reinforcement learning system for automated driving. The proposed framework leverages merits of both rule-based and learning-based approaches for safety assurance. Our safety system consists of two…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2020-04-24 Ali Baheri , Subramanya Nageshrao , H. Eric Tseng , Ilya Kolmanovsky , Anouck Girard , Dimitar Filev

Safety is an essential component for deploying reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms in real-world scenarios, and is critical during the learning process itself. A natural first approach toward safe RL is to manually specify constraints on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-29 Krishnan Srinivasan , Benjamin Eysenbach , Sehoon Ha , Jie Tan , Chelsea Finn

The growing trend of fledgling reinforcement learning systems making their way into real-world applications has been accompanied by growing concerns for their safety and robustness. In recent years, a variety of approaches have been put…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-03 Chloe He , Borja G. Leon , Francesco Belardinelli

Safe deployment of autonomous robots in diverse scenarios requires agents that are capable of efficiently adapting to new environments while satisfying constraints. In this work, we propose a practical and theoretically-justified approach…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-02-17 Thomas Lew , Apoorva Sharma , James Harrison , Andrew Bylard , Marco Pavone

The ability to learn and execute optimal control policies safely is critical to realization of complex autonomy, especially where task restarts are not available and/or the systems are safety-critical. Safety requirements are often…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-10-06 S M Nahid Mahmud , Moad Abudia , Scott A Nivison , Zachary I. Bell , Rushikesh Kamalapurkar

The deployment of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in real-world applications is constrained by its failure to satisfy safety criteria. Existing Safe Reinforcement Learning (SafeRL) methods, which rely on cost functions to enforce safety, often…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-09 Weidong Huang , Jiaming Ji , Chunhe Xia , Borong Zhang , Yaodong Yang

Designing hierarchical reinforcement learning algorithms that exhibit safe behaviour is not only vital for practical applications but also, facilitates a better understanding of an agent's decisions. We tackle this problem in the options…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-07-01 Arushi Jain , Khimya Khetarpal , Doina Precup

Reinforcement learning (RL) has been successfully applied to a variety of robotics applications, where it outperforms classical methods. However, the safety aspect of RL and the transfer to the real world remain an open challenge. A…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-04-21 Murad Dawood , Ahmed Shokry , Maren Bennewitz

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

Large language models (LLMs), despite possessing latent safety understanding from their vast pretraining data, remain vulnerable to generating harmful content and exhibit issues such as over-refusal and utility degradation after safety…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Yi Zhang , An Zhang , XiuYu Zhang , Leheng Sheng , Yuxin Chen , Zhenkai Liang , Xiang Wang

An important goal in reinforcement learning is to create agents that can quickly adapt to new goals while avoiding situations that might cause damage to themselves or their environments. One way agents learn is through exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-05-08 Djordje Grbic , Sebastian Risi

Reinforcement Learning (RL) applications in real-world scenarios must prioritize safety and reliability, which impose strict constraints on agent behavior. Model-based RL leverages predictive world models for action planning and policy…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-06 Artem Latyshev , Gregory Gorbov , Aleksandr I. Panov

We propose a framework for ensuring safe behavior of a reinforcement learning agent when the reward function may be difficult to specify. In order to do this, we rely on the existence of demonstrations from expert policies, and we provide a…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2018-11-22 Jessie Huang , Fa Wu , Doina Precup , Yang Cai

Despite remarkable achievements in artificial intelligence, the deployability of learning-enabled systems in high-stakes real-world environments still faces persistent challenges. For example, in safety-critical domains like autonomous…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-12-19 Minjae Cho , Chuangchuang Sun

Reinforcement learning (RL) is increasingly used to personalize instruction in intelligent tutoring systems, yet the field lacks a formal framework for defining and evaluating pedagogical safety. We introduce a four-layer model of…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Oluseyi Olukola , Nick Rahimi

Perception components in autonomous systems are often developed and optimized independently of downstream decision-making and control components, relying on established performance metrics like accuracy, precision, and recall. Traditional…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-12-05 Weisi Fan , Jesse Lane , Qisai Liu , Soumik Sarkar , Tichakorn Wongpiromsarn

While there has been progress towards aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human values and ensuring safe behaviour at inference time, safety guards can easily be removed when fine tuned on unsafe and harmful datasets. While this…

In the trial-and-error mechanism of reinforcement learning (RL), a notorious contradiction arises when we expect to learn a safe policy: how to learn a safe policy without enough data and prior model about the dangerous region? Existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-29 Haitong Ma , Changliu Liu , Shengbo Eben Li , Sifa Zheng , Wenchao Sun , Jianyu Chen

Safety has become one of the main challenges of applying deep reinforcement learning to real world systems. Currently, the incorporation of external knowledge such as human oversight is the only means to prevent the agent from visiting the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-11-17 Yunkun Xu , Zhenyu Liu , Guifang Duan , Jiangcheng Zhu , Xiaolong Bai , Jianrong Tan

Traditionally, reinforcement learning methods predict the next action based on the current state. However, in many situations, directly applying actions to control systems or robots is dangerous and may lead to unexpected behaviors because…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-11-03 Nan Lin , Yuxuan Li , Yujun Zhu , Ruolin Wang , Xiayu Zhang , Jianmin Ji , Keke Tang , Xiaoping Chen , Xinming Zhang