Title
End-to-End Safe Reinforcement Learning through Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Continuous Control Tasks
Abstract
Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found limited success beyond simulated applications, and one main reason is the absence of safety guarantees during the learning process. Real world systems would realistically fail or break before an optimal controller can be learned. To address this issue, we propose a controller architecture that combines (1) a model-free RL-based controller with (2) model-based controllers utilizing control barrier functions (CBFs) and (3) on-line learning of the unknown system dynamics, in order to ensure safety during learning. general framework leverages the success of RL algorithms to learn high-performance controllers, while the CBF-based controllers both guarantee safety and guide the learning process by constraining the set of explorable polices. We utilize Gaussian Processes (GPs) to model the system dynamics and its uncertainties. Our novel controller synthesis algorithm, RL-CBF, guarantees safety with high probability during the learning process, regardless of the RL algorithm used, and demonstrates greater policy exploration efficiency. We test our algorithm on (1) control of an inverted pendulum and (2) autonomous car-following with wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and show that our algorithm attains much greater sample efficiency in learning than other state-of-the-art algorithms and maintains safety during the entire learning process.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1609/aaai.v33i01.33013387
national conference on artificial intelligence
Field
DocType
Volume
Inverted pendulum,Control theory,Mathematical optimization,Wireless,Computer science,End-to-end principle,Control engineering,Global Positioning System,System dynamics,Gaussian process,Reinforcement learning
Journal
33
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
20
1.04
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Richard Cheng1212.41
Gábor Orosz2201.04
Richard M. Murray3123221223.70
Burdick, J.W.42988516.87