11 papers
Exact Decomposition of Value Functions for Two-Player Games in Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability
Dylan Hirsch, William Sharpless, Sylvia Herbert
Hamilton-Jacobi reachability (HJR) is an important framework in safe control theory. HJR provides theoretical tools and numerical methods to obtain value-functions for tasks involv…
Extending and Unifying the Fundamental Tasks of Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Analysis
Dylan Hirsch, William Sharpless, Donggun Lee +1
In this work, we introduce the generalized reach-avoid (GRA) task, which both extends and unifies the canonical tasks of Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability (HJR). We show that the GRA no…
An Update to the Level Set Theorems in Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Analysis
Dylan Hirsch, William McEneaney, Jaime Fisac +2
Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability (HJR) is an important framework for controlling safety-critical systems despite uncertainty. Its theoretical underpinnings are rooted in Hamilton-Jacob…
Exact Decomposition of Adversarial Dual-Objective Value Functions, with Applications to Optimal Drug Dosing
Dylan Hirsch, William Sharpless, Sylvia Herbert
Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability (HJR) is a central framework in safe control theory. While HJR has traditionally focused on a few fundamental tasks, there is increasing interest in sc…
Bellman Value Decomposition for Task Logic in Safe Optimal Control
William Sharpless, Oswin So, Dylan Hirsch +2
Real-world tasks involve nuanced combinations of goal and safety specifications. In high dimensions, the challenge is exacerbated: formal automata become cumbersome, and the combin…
Safe Stochastic Explorer: Enabling Safe Goal Driven Exploration in Stochastic Environments and Safe Interaction with Unknown Objects
Nikhil Uday Shinde, Dylan Hirsch, Michael C. Yip +1
Autonomous robots operating in unstructured, safety-critical environments, from planetary exploration to warehouses and homes, must learn to safely navigate and interact with their…
Learning to Nudge: A Scalable Barrier Function Framework for Safe Robot Interaction in Dense Clutter
Haixin Jin, Nikhil Uday Shinde, Soofiyan Atar +5
Robots operating in everyday environments must navigate and manipulate within densely cluttered spaces, where physical contact with surrounding objects is unavoidable. Traditional…
Viscosity CBFs: Bridging the Control Barrier Function and Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Frameworks in Safe Control Theory
Dylan Hirsch, Jaime Fernández Fisac, Sylvia Herbert
Control barrier functions (CBFs) and Hamilton-Jacobi reachability (HJR) are central frameworks in safe control. Traditionally, these frameworks have been viewed as distinct, with t…
Dual-Objective Reinforcement Learning with Novel Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Formulations
William Sharpless, Dylan Hirsch, Sander Tonkens +2
Hard constraints in reinforcement learning (RL) often degrade policy performance. Lagrangian methods offer a way to blend objectives with constraints, but require intricate reward…
Approximate Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Analysis for a Class of Two-Timescale Systems, with Application to Biological Models
Dylan Hirsch, Sylvia Herbert
Hamilton-Jacobi reachability (HJR) is an exciting framework used for control of safety-critical systems with nonlinear and possibly uncertain dynamics. However, HJR suffers from th…
Back to Base: Towards Hands-Off Learning via Safe Resets with Reach-Avoid Safety Filters
Azra Begzadić, Nikhil Uday Shinde, Sander Tonkens +5
Designing controllers that accomplish tasks while guaranteeing safety constraints remains a significant challenge. We often want an agent to perform well in a nominal task, such as…