Paper ID: 2209.11328

Learning Certifiably Robust Controllers Using Fragile Perception

Dawei Sun, Negin Musavi, Geir Dullerud, Sanjay Shakkottai, Sayan Mitra

Advances in computer vision and machine learning enable robots to perceive their surroundings in powerful new ways, but these perception modules have well-known fragilities. We consider the problem of synthesizing a safe controller that is robust despite perception errors. The proposed method constructs a state estimator based on Gaussian processes with input-dependent noises. This estimator computes a high-confidence set for the actual state given a perceived state. Then, a robust neural network controller is synthesized that can provably handle the state uncertainty. Furthermore, an adaptive sampling algorithm is proposed to jointly improve the estimator and controller. Simulation experiments, including a realistic vision-based lane-keeping example in CARLA, illustrate the promise of the proposed approach in synthesizing robust controllers with deep-learning-based perception.

Submitted: Sep 22, 2022