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Accepted manuscript

Repairing Neural Network-based Control Policies with Safety Preservation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2025

Pengyuan Lu
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, pelu@seas.upenn.edu, mcleav@seas.upenn.edu, sokolsky@seas.upenn.edu, lee@seas.upenn.edu
Matthew Cleaveland
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, pelu@seas.upenn.edu, mcleav@seas.upenn.edu, sokolsky@seas.upenn.edu, lee@seas.upenn.edu
Oleg Sokolsky
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, pelu@seas.upenn.edu, mcleav@seas.upenn.edu, sokolsky@seas.upenn.edu, lee@seas.upenn.edu
Insup Lee
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, pelu@seas.upenn.edu, mcleav@seas.upenn.edu, sokolsky@seas.upenn.edu, lee@seas.upenn.edu
Ivan Ruchkin
Affiliation:
University of Florida, iruchkin@ece.ufl.edu
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Abstract

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Neural network (NN)-based control policies have proven their advantages in cyber-physical systems (CPS). When an NN-based policy fails to fulfill a formal specification, engineers leverage NN repair algorithms to fix its behaviors. However, such repair techniques risk breaking the existing correct behaviors, losing not only correctness but also verifiability of initial state subsets. That is, the repair may introduce new risks, previously unaccounted for. In response, we formalize the problem of Repair with Preservation (RwP) and develop Incremental Simulated Annealing Repair (ISAR). ISAR is an NN repair algorithm that aims to preserve correctness and verifiability — while repairing as many failures as possible. Our algorithm leverages simulated annealing on a barriered energy function to safeguard the already-correct initial states while repairing as many additional ones as possible. Moreover, formal verification is utilized to guarantee the repair results. ISAR is compared to a reviewed set of state-of-the-art algorithms, including (1) reinforcement learning based techniques (STLGym and F-MDP), (2) supervised learning-based techniques (MIQP and minimally deviating repair), and (3) online shielding techniques (tube MPC shielding). Upon evaluation on two standard benchmarks, OpenAI Gym mountain car and an unmanned underwater vehicle, ISAR not only preserves correct behaviors from previously verified initial state regions, but also repairs 81.4% and 23.5% of broken state spaces in the two benchmarks. Moreover, the signal temporal logic (STL) robustness of the ISAR-repaired policies is higher than the baselines.

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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press