# Robustness Evaluation of Offline Reinforcement Learning for Robot Control Against Action Perturbations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18781 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18781/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Offline RL algorithms, one of 13 directions in Offline RL and imitation learning from data.
- Builds on 51 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- Offline RL and imitation learning from data / [Offline RL algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/offlinerl/offline-rl-algorithms/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09477/) (2018)
- [Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01643/) (2020)
- [Conservative Q-Learning for Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04779/) (2020)
- [Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06907/) (2017)
- [D4RL: Datasets for Deep Data-Driven Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07219/) (2020)
- [Offline Reinforcement Learning with Implicit Q-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06169/) (2021)
- [Off-Policy Deep Reinforcement Learning without Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02900/) (2018)
- [Hindsight Experience Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.01495/) (2017)
- [A Minimalist Approach to Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06860/) (2021)
- [AWAC: Accelerating Online Reinforcement Learning with Offline Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09359/) (2020)
- [Robust Adversarial Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.02702/) (2017)
- [Uncertainty-Based Offline Reinforcement Learning with Diversified Q-Ensemble](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01548/) (2021)
- [Robust Deep Reinforcement Learning against Adversarial Perturbations on State Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08938/) (2020)
- [Offline Reinforcement Learning with Fisher Divergence Critic Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.08050/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Offline Reinforcement Learning: Taxonomy, Review, and Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01387/) (2022)
- [Closing the Sim-to-Real Loop: Adapting Simulation Randomization with Real World Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05687/) (2018)
- [Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning via Balanced Replay and Pessimistic Q-Ensemble](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00591/) (2021)
- [Action Robust Reinforcement Learning and Applications in Continuous Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09184/) (2019)
- [Robust Reinforcement Learning using Offline Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05129/) (2022)
- [Is Value Learning Really the Main Bottleneck in Offline RL?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09329/) (2024)
- [Distributionally Robust Model-Based Offline Reinforcement Learning with Near-Optimal Sample Complexity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05767/) (2022)
- [d3rlpy: An Offline Deep Reinforcement Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03788/) (2021)
- [RORL: Robust Offline Reinforcement Learning via Conservative Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02829/) (2022)
- [Who Is the Strongest Enemy? Towards Optimal and Efficient Evasion Attacks in Deep RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05087/) (2021)
- [Corruption-Robust Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06630/) (2021)
- [Double Pessimism is Provably Efficient for Distributionally Robust Offline Reinforcement Learning: Generic Algorithm and Robust Partial Coverage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09659/) (2023)
- [DeepThermal: Combustion Optimization for Thermal Power Generating Units Using Offline Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11492/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Adversarial Fine-tuning in Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning for Robust Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13358/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Offline reinforcement learning, which learns solely from datasets without environmental interaction, has gained attention. This approach, similar to traditional online deep reinforcement learning, is particularly promising for robot control applications. Nevertheless, its robustness against real-world challenges, such as joint actuator faults in robots, remains a critical concern. This study evaluates the robustness of existing offline reinforcement learning methods using legged robots from OpenAI Gym based on average episodic rewards. For robustness evaluation, we simulate failures by incorporating both random and adversarial perturbations, representing worst-case scenarios, into the joint torque signals. Our experiments show that existing offline reinforcement learning methods exhibit significant vulnerabilities to these action perturbations and are more vulnerable than online reinforcement learning methods, highlighting the need for more robust approaches in this field.