Revisiting Safe Exploration in Safe Reinforcement learning

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Eckel, David, Zhang, Baohe, Bödecker, Joschka
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Eckel, David
Zhang, Baohe
Bödecker, Joschka
author_facet Eckel, David
Zhang, Baohe
Bödecker, Joschka
contents Safe reinforcement learning (SafeRL) extends standard reinforcement learning with the idea of safety, where safety is typically defined through the constraint of the expected cost return of a trajectory being below a set limit. However, this metric fails to distinguish how costs accrue, treating infrequent severe cost events as equal to frequent mild ones, which can lead to riskier behaviors and result in unsafe exploration. We introduce a new metric, expected maximum consecutive cost steps (EMCC), which addresses safety during training by assessing the severity of unsafe steps based on their consecutive occurrence. This metric is particularly effective for distinguishing between prolonged and occasional safety violations. We apply EMMC in both on- and off-policy algorithm for benchmarking their safe exploration capability. Finally, we validate our metric through a set of benchmarks and propose a new lightweight benchmark task, which allows fast evaluation for algorithm design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_01245
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Revisiting Safe Exploration in Safe Reinforcement learning
Eckel, David
Zhang, Baohe
Bödecker, Joschka
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Safe reinforcement learning (SafeRL) extends standard reinforcement learning with the idea of safety, where safety is typically defined through the constraint of the expected cost return of a trajectory being below a set limit. However, this metric fails to distinguish how costs accrue, treating infrequent severe cost events as equal to frequent mild ones, which can lead to riskier behaviors and result in unsafe exploration. We introduce a new metric, expected maximum consecutive cost steps (EMCC), which addresses safety during training by assessing the severity of unsafe steps based on their consecutive occurrence. This metric is particularly effective for distinguishing between prolonged and occasional safety violations. We apply EMMC in both on- and off-policy algorithm for benchmarking their safe exploration capability. Finally, we validate our metric through a set of benchmarks and propose a new lightweight benchmark task, which allows fast evaluation for algorithm design.
title Revisiting Safe Exploration in Safe Reinforcement learning
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.01245