Safe Reinforcement Learning From Pixels Using a Stochastic Latent Representation
Yannick Hogewind, Thiago D. Simão, Tal Kachman, Nils Jansen
Abstract
We address the problem of safe reinforcement learning from pixel observations. Inherent challenges in such settings are (1) a trade-off between reward optimization and adhering to safety constraints, (2) partial observability, and (3) high-dimensional observations. We formalize the problem in a constrained, partially observable Markov decision process framework, where an agent obtains distinct reward and safety signals. To address the curse of dimensionality, we employ a novel safety critic using the stochastic latent actor-critic (SLAC) approach. The latent variable model predicts rewards and safety violations, and we use the safety critic to train safe policies. Using well-known benchmark environments, we demonstrate competitive performance over existing approaches regarding computational requirements, final reward return, and satisfying the safety constraints.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{
hogewind2023safe,
title={Safe Reinforcement Learning From Pixels Using a Stochastic Latent Representation},
author={Yannick Hogewind and Thiago D. Sim{\~a}o and Tal Kachman and Nils Jansen},
booktitle={The Eleventh International Conference on Learning Representations },
year={2023},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=b39dQt_uffW}
}