Publication Type
Conference Proceeding Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
7-2026
Abstract
Sequential decision-making using Markov Decision Process underpins many real-world applications. Both model-based and model-free methods have achieved strong results in these settings. However, real-world tasks must balance reward maximization with safety constraints, often conflicting objectives, that can lead to unstable min–max, adversarial optimization. A promising alternative is safety reachability analysis, which precomputes a forward-invariant safe state–action set, ensuring that an agent starting inside this set remains safe indefinitely. Yet, most reachability-based methods address only hard safety constraints, and little work extends reachability to cumulative cost constraints. To address this, first, we define a safety-conditioned reachability set that decouples reward maximization from cumulative safety cost constraints. Second, we show how this set enforces safety constraints without unstable min–max or Lagrangian optimization, yielding a novel offline safe RL algorithm that learns a safe policy from a fixed dataset without environment interaction. Finally, experiments on standard offline safe-RL benchmarks, and a real-world maritime navigation task demonstrate that our method matches or outperforms state-of-the-art baselines while maintaining safety.
Discipline
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics
Research Areas
Intelligent Systems and Optimization
Areas of Excellence
Sustainability
Publication
Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, Dublin, Ireland, 2026 June 27 - July 2
Volume
36
First Page
581
Last Page
590
ISBN
9781577359104
Identifier
10.1609/icaps.v36i1.42876
Publisher
AAAI Press
City or Country
Dublin
Citation
BRAHMANAGE JANAKA CHATHURANGA THILAKARATHNA and KUMAR, Akshat.
Beyond hard constraints: budget-conditioned reachability for safe offline reinforcement learning. (2026). Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, Dublin, Ireland, 2026 June 27 - July 2. 36, 581-590.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/11143
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1609/icaps.v36i1.42876