Safe Learning in Robotics: From Learning-Based Control to Safe Reinforcement Learning

🤖 Plain-English Summary

The last half decade has seen a steep rise in the number of contributions on safe learning methods for real-world robotic deployments from both the control and reinforcement learning communities. As data- and learning-based robot control methods continue to gain traction, researchers must understand when and how to best leverage them in real-world scenarios where safety is imperative, such as when operating in close proximityto humans.

🔑 Key Findings

• This article provides a concise but holistic review of the recent advances made in using machine learning to achieve safe decision-making under uncertainties, with a focus on unifying the language and frameworks used in control theory and reinforcement learning research.
• It includes learning-based control approaches that safely improve performance by learning the uncertain dynamics, reinforcement learning approaches that encourage safety or robustness, and methods that can formally certify the safety of a learned control policy.
• As data- and learning-based robot control methods continue to gain traction, researchers must understand when and how to best leverage them in real-world scenarios where safety is imperative, such as when operating in close proximityto humans.

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