Policy Gradient Methods for the Cost-Constrained LQR: Strong Duality and Global Convergence

In safety-critical applications, reinforcement learning (RL) needs to consider safety constraints. However, theoretical understandings of constrained RL for continuous control are largely absent. As a case study, this article presents a cost-constrained linear–quadratic regulator (LQR) formulation, where a number of LQR costs with user-defined penalty matrices are subject to constraints. To solve it, we propose a policy gradient (PG) primal-dual method to find an optimal state feedback gain. Despite the nonconvexity of the cost-constrained LQR problem, we provide a constructive proof for strong duality and a geometric interpretation of an optimal multiplier set. By proving that the concave dual function is Lipschitz smooth, we further provide convergence guarantees for the PG primal–dual method. Finally, we perform simulations to validate our theoretical findings.

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