Your Learned Constraint is Secretly a Backward Reachable Tube

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Qadri, Mohamad, Swamy, Gokul, Francis, Jonathan, Kaess, Michael, Bajcsy, Andrea
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Qadri, Mohamad
Swamy, Gokul
Francis, Jonathan
Kaess, Michael
Bajcsy, Andrea
author_facet Qadri, Mohamad
Swamy, Gokul
Francis, Jonathan
Kaess, Michael
Bajcsy, Andrea
contents Inverse Constraint Learning (ICL) is the problem of inferring constraints from safe (i.e., constraint-satisfying) demonstrations. The hope is that these inferred constraints can then be used downstream to search for safe policies for new tasks and, potentially, under different dynamics. Our paper explores the question of what mathematical entity ICL recovers. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that both in theory and in practice, ICL recovers the set of states where failure is inevitable, rather than the set of states where failure has already happened. In the language of safe control, this means we recover a backwards reachable tube (BRT) rather than a failure set. In contrast to the failure set, the BRT depends on the dynamics of the data collection system. We discuss the implications of the dynamics-conditionedness of the recovered constraint on both the sample-efficiency of policy search and the transferability of learned constraints.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_15618
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Your Learned Constraint is Secretly a Backward Reachable Tube
Qadri, Mohamad
Swamy, Gokul
Francis, Jonathan
Kaess, Michael
Bajcsy, Andrea
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Inverse Constraint Learning (ICL) is the problem of inferring constraints from safe (i.e., constraint-satisfying) demonstrations. The hope is that these inferred constraints can then be used downstream to search for safe policies for new tasks and, potentially, under different dynamics. Our paper explores the question of what mathematical entity ICL recovers. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that both in theory and in practice, ICL recovers the set of states where failure is inevitable, rather than the set of states where failure has already happened. In the language of safe control, this means we recover a backwards reachable tube (BRT) rather than a failure set. In contrast to the failure set, the BRT depends on the dynamics of the data collection system. We discuss the implications of the dynamics-conditionedness of the recovered constraint on both the sample-efficiency of policy search and the transferability of learned constraints.
title Your Learned Constraint is Secretly a Backward Reachable Tube
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.15618