This paper presents a safe learning framework that employs an adaptive model learning algorithm together with barrier certificates for systems with possibly nonstationary agent dynamics. To extract the dynamic structure of the model, we use a sparse optimization technique. We use the learned model in combination with control barrier certificates which constrain policies (feedback controllers) in order to maintain safety, which refers to avoiding particular undesirable regions of the state space. Under certain conditions, recovery of safety in the sense of Lyapunov stability after violations of safety due to the nonstationarity is guaranteed. In addition, we reformulate an action-value function approximation to make any kernel-based nonlinear function estimation method applicable to our adaptive learning framework. Lastly, solutions to the barrier-certified policy optimization are guaranteed to be globally optimal, ensuring the greedy policy improvement under mild conditions. The resulting framework is validated via simulations of a quadrotor, which has previously been used under stationarity assumptions in the safe learnings literature, and is then tested on a real robot, the brushbot, whose dynamics is unknown, highly complex and nonstationary.Index Terms-Safe learning, control barrier certificate, sparse optimization, kernel adaptive filter, brushbot

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Most modern reinforcement learning algorithms optimize a cumulative single-step cost along a trajectory. The optimized motions are often 'unnatural', representing, for example, behaviors with sudden accelerations that waste energy and lack predictability. In this work, we present a novel paradigm of controlling nonlinear systems via the minimization of the Koopman spectrum cost: a cost over the Koopman operator of the controlled dynamics. This induces a broader class of dynamical behaviors that evolve over stable manifolds such as nonlinear oscillators, closed loops, and smooth movements. We demonstrate that some dynamics realizations that are not possible with a cumulative cost are feasible in this paradigm. Moreover, we present a provably efficient online learning algorithm for our problem that enjoys a sub-linear regret bound under some structural assumptions.

This work present novel method for structure estimation of an underlying dynamical system. We tackle problems of estimating dynamic structure from bandit feedback contaminated by sub-Gaussian noise. In particular, we focus on periodically behaved discrete dynamical system in the Euclidean space, and carefully identify certain obtainable subset of full information of the periodic structure. We then derive a sample complexity bound for periodic structure estimation. Technically, asymptotic results for exponential sums are adopted to effectively average out the noise effects while preventing the information to be estimated from vanishing. For linear systems, the use of the Weyl sum further allows us to extract eigenstructures. Our theoretical claims are experimentally validated on simulations of toy examples, including Cellular Automata.