# Explainable Reinforcement Learning via Physics-Aware Policy Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24672 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.24672/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Safe and constrained RL, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- Builds on 8 of its 11 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [Safe and constrained RL](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/safe-and-constrained-rl/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Addressing Function Approximation Error in Actor-Critic Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09477/) (2018)
- [Verifiable Reinforcement Learning via Policy Extraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08328/) (2018)
- [Explainable Reinforcement Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06247/) (2020)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Overview and Field Guide for Future Research Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11561/) (2021)
- [Explainable AI for Safe and Trustworthy Autonomous Driving: A Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10086/) (2024)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Needs, Techniques, Applications, and Future Direction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00265/) (2024)
- [Optimizing Interpretable Decision Tree Policies for Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11632/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Explainable Reinforcement Learning: Concepts, Algorithms, Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.06665/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In safety-critical sectors such as robotics and automotive engineering, the deployment of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is often hindered by the black-box nature of deep neural networks. This lack of transparency poses significant challenges for regulatory compliance and human-agent trust. This paper presents an experimental study aimed at making high-performance continuous control DRL systems interpretable. A policy distillation framework is implemented using the classic Inverted Pendulum benchmark. A high-performance Twin Delayed DDPG (TD3) agent serves as an opaque, continuous teacher model, whose policy is distilled into an interpretable student surrogate based on a shallow Decision Tree. By leveraging a custom physics-aware feature and "Noisy Oracle Rollouts" for dataset generation, the distillation process achieves performance equivalent to the expert teacher. Furthermore, comparative control theory analysis reveals a fundamental trade-off: transitioning from continuous to discrete rule-based control induces high-frequency Bang-Bang actuation and a stable bimodal limit cycle. Simulation results indicate that Bounded-Input Bounded-Output (BIBO) stability is maintained while providing both global and local interpretability for safe autonomous systems.