# SALSA-RL: Stability Analysis in the Latent Space of Actions for Reinforcement Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15512 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.15512/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Interpretable and logic-guided RL, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 41 of its 73 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [Interpretable and logic-guided RL](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/interpretable-and-logic-guided-rl/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [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)
- [Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02971/) (2015)
- [Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09477/) (2018)
- [OpenAI Gym](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01540/) (2016)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [QT-Opt: Scalable Deep Reinforcement Learning for Vision-Based Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10293/) (2018)
- [Data-Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08296/) (2018)
- [Benchmarking Deep Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.06778/) (2016)
- [Safe Learning in Robotics: From Learning-Based Control to Safe Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06266/) (2021)
- [Embed to Control: A Locally Linear Latent Dynamics Model for Control from Raw Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.07365/) (2015)
- [Reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10369/) (2024)
- [Programmatically Interpretable Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02477/) (2018)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Prototypical Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11271/) (2021)
- [Learning Deep Neural Network Representations for Koopman Operators of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06850/) (2017)
- [Stochastic Neural Networks for Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03012/) (2017)
- [Interpretable End-to-end Urban Autonomous Driving with Latent Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08726/) (2020)
- [Explainability in Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.06693/) (2020)
- [Towards Interpretable Reinforcement Learning Using Attention Augmented Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02500/) (2019)
- [SDRL: Interpretable and Data-efficient Deep Reinforcement Learning Leveraging Symbolic Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.00090/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Interpretable Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13112/) (2021)
- [A review on Deep Reinforcement Learning for Fluid Mechanics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04127/) (2019)
- [Neural Logic Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10729/) (2019)
- [Interpretable Policies for Reinforcement Learning by Genetic Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04170/) (2017)
- [Interpretable and Explainable Logical Policies via Neurally Guided Symbolic Abstraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01439/) (2023)
- [Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning for Control with Stability Guarantee](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14288/) (2020)
- [Stability-certified reinforcement learning: A control-theoretic perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11505/) (2018)
- [Koopman Q-learning: Offline Reinforcement Learning via Symmetries of Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01365/) (2021)
- [SINDy-RL: Interpretable and Efficient Model-Based Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09110/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Physics Informed Reinforcement Learning: Review and Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01909/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Modern deep reinforcement learning (DRL) methods have made significant advances in handling continuous action spaces. However, real-world control systems, especially those requiring precise and reliable performance, often demand interpretability in the sense of a-priori assessments of agent behavior to identify safe or failure-prone interactions with environments. To address this limitation, this work proposes SALSA-RL (Stability Analysis in the Latent Space of Actions), a novel RL framework that models control actions as dynamic, time-dependent variables evolving within a latent space. By employing a pre-trained encoder-decoder and a state-dependent linear system, this approach enables interpretability through local stability analysis, where instantaneous growth in action-norms can be predicted before their execution. It is demonstrated that SALSA-RL can be deployed in a non-invasive manner for assessing the local stability of actions from pretrained RL agents without compromising on performance across diverse benchmark environments. By enabling a more interpretable analysis of action generation, SALSA-RL provides a powerful tool for advancing the design, analysis, and theoretical understanding of RL systems.