Robust RL

RL: Reinforcement Learning

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Overview

Robust reinforcement learning studies how agents can make reliable decisions when dynamics, observations, rewards, or other agents differ from training conditions. Common approaches include robust Markov decision processes and distributionally robust optimization, adversarial training and domain randomization, and policies that use history or uncertainty estimates to adapt. Safety shields and formal verification add ways to constrain or certify behavior, with evaluation spanning control benchmarks, robotics, driving, and offline or multi-agent settings. A central tension is that worst-case protection can make policies overly conservative, while nominal performance may not predict transfer to unseen shifts; measuring that trade-off remains a key challenge.

Latest papers

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231 papers26 papers in the last four weeks, up 13% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Emergent Dexterity via Diverse Resets and Large-Scale Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 16, 2026Patrick Yin, Tyler Westenbroek, Zhengyu Zhang +9Robotic RLRobotic Manipulation

    University of Washington · NVIDIA · Microsoft Research

  2. Evaluating the Robustness of Reinforcement Learning based Adaptive Traffic Signal Control

    Mar 16, 2026Dickens Kwesiga, Angshuman Guin, Khaled Abdelghany +1Traffic Signal ControlReinforcement Learning

    Research Engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, 30332 · Principal Research Engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, 30332 · Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA, 75205 +1

  3. Iterative Learning Control-Informed Reinforcement Learning for Batch Process Control

    Mar 16, 2026Runze Lin, Ziqi Zhuo, Junghui Chen +2Iterative Learning ControlRL Control

    State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China · Department of Chemical Engineering, Chung-Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan 32023, Taiwan, R.O.C.

  4. CycleRL: Sim-to-Real Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robust Autonomous Bicycle Control

    Mar 16, 2026Gelu Liu, Teng Wang, Zhijie Wu +3Robotic ControlRL for Robotics

    School of Electronics and Communication Engineering and Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Navigation and Communication Integration, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China

  5. CALF: Communication-Aware Learning Framework for Distributed Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 13, 2026Carlos Purves, Pietro Lio'Distributed RLRobust RL

    University of Cambridge

  6. Taming the Adversary: A Cost-to-Disturbance Ratio Approach to Adversarial Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 12, 2026Taeho Lee, Donghwan LeeAdversarial MARLReinforcement Learning

    School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea

  7. A Robust and Efficient Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Traffic Signal Control

    Mar 12, 2026Sheng-You Huang, Hsiao-Chuan Chang, Yen-Chi Chen +6Centralized Training with Decentralized ExecutionReinforcement Learning

    National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University · Academia Sinica · Kochi University of Technology +1

  8. Ensuring Safety in Automated Mechanical Ventilation through Offline Reinforcement Learning and Digital Twin Verification

    Mar 11, 2026Hang Yu, Huidong Liu, Qingchen Zhang +5Offline RLSafe RL

    School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK · School of Computer Science, Chongqing University, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Hainan University, China +1

  9. ASTER: Attitude-aware Suspended-payload Quadrotor Traversal via Efficient Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 11, 2026Dongcheng Cao, Jin Zhou, Shuo LiQuadrotor ControlRobotic RL

    College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.

  10. MAVEN: A Meta-Reinforcement Learning Framework for Varying-Dynamics Expertise in Agile Quadrotor Maneuvers

    Mar 11, 2026Jin Zhou, Dongcheng Cao, Xian Wang +1Robot Policy AdaptationQuadrotor Control

    Authors are with the College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

  11. Robust Regularized Policy Iteration under Transition Uncertainty

    Mar 10, 2026Hongqiang Lin, Zhenghui Fu, Weihao Tang +4Offline RLRobust RL

    College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Optics and Electronics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China · School of Software Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China +2

  12. Sim2Act: Robust Simulation-to-Decision Learning via Adversarial Calibration and Group-Relative Perturbation

    Mar 10, 2026Hongyu Cao, Jinghan Zhang, Kunpeng Liu +5Robust RLDecision-Making under Uncertainty

    Arizona State University · Clemson University · University of Kansas +3

  13. FAME: Force-Adaptive RL for Expanding the Manipulation Envelope of a Full-Scale Humanoid

    Mar 9, 2026Niraj Pudasaini, Yutong Zhang, Jensen Lavering +3Bimanual Robotic ManipulationHumanoid Robot Control

    Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA. · Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.

  14. Model-based Offline RL via Robust Value-Aware Model Learning with Implicitly Differentiable Adaptive Weighting

    Mar 9, 2026Zhongjian Qiao, Jiafei Lyu, Boxiang Lyu +3Offline RLModel-Based RL

    CityUHK · Tencent · UChicago +1

  15. Adversarial Latent-State Training for Robust Policies in Partially Observable Domains

    Mar 7, 2026Angad Singh AhujaRobust RLPartially Observable RL

    Constrained Image-Synthesis Lab

  16. When Sensors Fail: Temporal Sequence Models for Robust PPO under Sensor Drift

    Mar 4, 2026Kevin Vogt-Lowell, Theodoros Tsiligkaridis, Rodney Lafuente-Mercado +4Robust RLPartially Observable RL

    MIT Lincoln Laboratory · Harvard · MIT

  17. Selecting Offline Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Stochastic Network Control

    Mar 4, 2026Nicolas Helson, Pegah Alizadeh, Anastasios GiovanidisConservative RLOffline RL

    Ericsson Research, Massy, France

  18. Portfolio Reinforcement Learning with Scenario-Context Rollout

    Feb 27, 2026Vanya Priscillia Bendatu, Yao LuPortfolio OptimizationQuantitative Finance

    National University of Singapore

  19. Curriculum Reinforcement Learning for Quadrotor Racing with Random Obstacles

    Feb 27, 2026Fangyu Sun, Fanxing Li, Yu Hu +4Autonomous Drone RacingAutonomous Racing

    School of Automation and Perception, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China · Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

  20. Robust Exploration in Directed Controller Synthesis via Reinforcement Learning with Soft Mixture-of-Experts

    Feb 22, 2026Toshihide Ubukata, Zhiyao Wang, Enhong Mu +2RL ExplorationGeneralization in RL

    Waseda University, Tokyo, 169-8050, Japan. · Osaka University, Japan. · Southwest University, China. +1

  21. MASPO: Unifying Gradient Utilization, Probability Mass, and Signal Reliability for Robust and Sample-Efficient LLM Reasoning

    Feb 19, 2026Xiaoliang Fu, Jiaye Lin, Yangyi Fang +7RL for Language ModelsRL for Language Model Reasoning

    Meituan · Fudan University · Tsinghua University +2

  22. Continual Uncertainty Learning for Robust Control of Nonlinear Systems with Multiple Heterogeneous Uncertainties

    Feb 19, 2026Heisei Yonezawa, Ansei Yonezawa, Itsuro KajiwaraRobust ControlRobust RL

    Division of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Hokkaido University N13, W8, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8628, Japan · Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University Kita 14, Nishi 9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0814, Japan

  23. Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for V2X Resource Allocation: Disentangling MARL Challenges Through Benchmarking

    Feb 18, 2026Siyuan Wang, Lei Lei, Pranav Maheshwari +2RL BenchmarksReinforcement Learning

    College of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada · College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo, 315211, China

  24. Solving Parameter-Robust Avoid Problems with Unknown Feasibility using Reinforcement Learning

    Feb 17, 2026Oswin So, Eric Yang Yu, Songyuan Zhang +3Safe RLReachability Analysis

    Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT · MIT Lincoln Laboratory

  25. CDRL: A Reinforcement Learning Framework Inspired by Cerebellar Circuits and Dendritic Computational Strategies

    Feb 17, 2026Sibo Zhang, Rui Jing, Liangfu Lv +2Reinforcement LearningSample-Efficient RL

    Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.

  26. KungfuAthleteBot: Learning High-Dynamic Motion from Videos with Unified Robust Recovery

    Feb 14, 2026Zhongxiang Lei, Lulu Cao, Xuyang Wang +3Humanoid Robot Fall RecoveryHumanoid Robotics

    Beijing Institute of Technology · QIYUAN Lab

  27. Trust, Don't Trust, or Flip: Robust Preference-Based Reinforcement Learning with Multi-Expert Feedback

    Jan 26, 2026Seyed Amir Hosseini, Maryam Abdolali, Amirhosein Tavakkoli +4Preference-Based RLRobust RL

    K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran · Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran · The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

  28. Sampling Strategies for Robust Universal Quadrupedal Locomotion Policies

    Oct 8, 2025David Rytz, Kim Tien Ly, Ioannis HavoutisDomain RandomizationSim-to-Real Transfer

    1Dynamic Robot Systems, Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford

  29. Finite-Time Convergence of Single-Trajectory Chi-Square Robust Q-Learning With Linear Function Approximation

    Oct 2, 2025Saptarshi Mandal, Yashaswini Murthy, R. SrikantQ-LearningDistributionally Robust RL

    ECE, UIUC · ORIE, UT Austin · ECE, CSL, and the director of NCSA at UIUC

  30. Learning Robust Penetration Testing Policies under Partial Observability: A systematic evaluation

    Sep 24, 2025Raphael Simon, Pieter Libin, Wim MeesReinforcement LearningPartially Observable RL

    Cyber Defence Lab, CISS Department Royal Military Academy · AI Lab, Department of Computer Science Vrije Universiteit Brussel