Hybrid Dynamical Systems

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15 papers1 paper in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

Nov 2, 2026

Unrolled gradients in disguise: bridging interpolation-based and Jacobian regularization for stable neural dynamics

Hybrid models and neural differential equations (NDEs) are becoming increasingly important for modelling physical systems; however, they often encounter stability and accuracy issues during long-term integration. Training on unrolled trajectories is known to limit these divergences but quickly becomes too computationally expensive due to the need to compute gradients over an iterative process, making this method impractical for large-scale physical systems (e.g. weather and climate forecasting). Two popular paradigms for improving the stability of learned dynamics are to train on interpolated or noisy samples or to regularize the Jacobian of the learned representation. In this work, we demonstrate that these paradigms can be understood under a common lens and that they both correspond to an approximation of the gradients obtained in an unrolled learning strategy. Building on this understanding, we derive a principled and complete approach to regularize training and demonstrate its impact on the stability of learned dynamical systems.

Maya Janvier, Etienne Meunier

LOCEAN, Sorbonne University, Paris, France · Inria, Paris, France

Neural Network Stability Neural ODEs Jacobian Regularization Hybrid Dynamical Systems

Oct 24, 2026

Hybrid-time PINNs: Discontinuity-Aware Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Learning Hybrid Dynamical Systems

Hybrid dynamical systems flow continuously but jump at discrete events. Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) fit data while enforcing known dynamics, but a single network is smooth in time and cannot model these jumps. We show that the more closely a PINN follows a jump, the larger its physics loss must be. We propose hybrid-time PINNs (HT-PINNs), which assign one network to each flow interval of the hybrid time domain and train the networks jointly with the jump times and the unknown parameters. The number of jumps and the sequence of modes are found by enumeration. HT-PINNs recover the number of jumps and the restitution coefficient of a bouncing ball. In a MuJoCo simulation of robotic disassembly, where a robot pulls a press-fitted pin out of a housing through a spring, HT-PINNs find the number of jumps and the sequence of modes, and estimate the static and kinetic friction coefficients with small errors of 0.1% and 1.7%.

Shivanshu Tripathi, Maziar Raissi

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA. · Department of Mathematics, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Physics-Informed ML Dynamical Systems System Identification Robot System Identification

Oct 1, 2026

The Effect of Gait Stability Based on Two Types of Impact Strategies for Two-Link Walking and Brachiating Robots

In this paper, we explore the impulsive dynamics common to single-joint, two-link models of walking and brachiating gaits with respect to slope and switching time. In particular, we investigate how the stability of a gait and bifurcations encountered within a family of gaits change under time-based and state-based switching of the impulsive dynamics.

Alan Estrada Flores, Nelson Rosa

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago IL 60616, USA

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems Gait Analysis

Sep 30, 2026

Learning Continuous Neural Representation of Stochastic Hybrid Systems

A stochastic hybrid system (SHS) is governed by a stochastic differential equation (SDE) describing the continuous dynamics and a Markov reset kernel triggered on the guard surface. Its probability evolution can be described by a hybrid Fokker-Planck (HFP) equation with a partial differential term corresponding to the SDE and an integral term arising from the reset kernel. This work shows that such an SHS can be approximated by an SDE in a higher-dimensional latent space where the sample paths are continuous. The key to this result is to encode different branches of the reset kernel using auxiliary variables, transforming the resets into deterministic ones that enable topological gluing. By the embedding theorem, the glued manifold can then be embedded into a higher-dimensional Euclidean space. We show that the probability evolution on the embedded image no longer requires explicit reset terms in the HFP equation. Building on this theorem, we design a loss that matches the evolving state distributions, enabling a single latent SDE to recover the probability evolution of the SHS without mode labeling, trajectory segmentation, or event-based simulations.

Sangli Teng, Hang Liu, Koushil Sreenath

Dynamical Systems Stochastic Differential Equations Latent Dynamics Modeling State Representation Learning Hybrid Dynamical Systems

Aug 28, 2026

Conservative Hybrid Graph Networks for Process Systems with Learned Routing

Industrial process networks do not maintain a single effective topology while operating: streams are throttled or bypassed, and units move between idle, transition, and active regimes. Models of such systems are typically trained on measured state trajectories while the operating mechanisms that generated them remain latent, and an unconstrained graph network can fit such a trajectory without assigning stable physical meaning to the recovered routing. We address both problems with the Conservative Hybrid Graph Network (CHGN), which learns routing, regime assignment, and removal rates as data-driven surrogates and inserts them into a fixed transport equation, so that the mass balance holds by construction for any predicted routing. CHGN trained on networks of 10-20 nodes transfers zero-shot to unseen graphs of 25-40 nodes without retraining, reaching an RMSE of 2.1e-3 against 6e-2 to 9e-2 for GNN baselines under the same protocol, with a gate MAE of 7.9e-3 and regime accuracy of 94.3% (1.2e-2 and 96.4% respectively on the fixed training topology). On a fluid-mixing pilot plant, CHGN improves on a persistence baseline for held-out physical faults but does not predict manual interventions, for which the governing valve actions are unobserved. The model therefore transfers across process topologies without retraining and exposes the latent mechanisms governing plant behaviour to inspection.

Paolo Guida

Physical Science and Engineering King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Physics-Informed GNNs System Identification Dynamical Systems Graph Structure Learning

Jun 18, 2026

A Differentiable Composite Approximation Framework for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Maneuvering Modeling from Sea-Trial Data

Field-based modeling from onboard measurements can produce autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) maneuvering models that reflect real operating characteristics. From an approximation perspective, conventional maneuvering models use predefined constraint polynomial bases, whereas data-driven models use data-adaptive bases. Motivated by this basis-function view, this paper presents a differentiable composite-approximation formulation, in which the polynomial-basis component and the data-adaptive basis component are treated as differentiable parts of a single predictor and calibrated jointly. A gradient-based co-calibration method is developed for full-scale AUV maneuvering prediction, where a sensitivity-aware mechanism regulates bounded polynomial updates while the neural residual captures remaining nonlinear discrepancies under a shared prediction objective. To account for ocean-current effects in field data, a turning-motion-based current estimation and compensation procedure is incorporated to construct current-compensated learning targets for training and rollout. The framework is evaluated using sea-trial data collected from a 7-meter AUV under multiple maneuvering conditions. Results show that the proposed method improves recursive trajectory and velocity prediction compared with polynomial-only, neural-only, and frozen-prior hybrid baselines, demonstrating its applicability to field-data-based AUV maneuvering modeling.

Aobo Wang, Aifei Xia, Zihao Wang +1

College of Shipbuilding Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, China · China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, Beijing, 100074, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China +1

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems Underwater Robotics System Identification Trajectory Prediction

Jun 17, 2026

OrthoReg: Orthogonal Regularization for Hybrid Symbolic-Neural Dynamical Systems

Dynamical systems are fundamental to modeling the natural world, yet modeling them involves a persistent trade-off: manually prescribed mechanistic models are interpretable by design but often overly simplistic and misspecified; in contrast, flexible data-driven neural methods lack physical insight. Hybrid modeling aims for the best of both worlds by combining a prescribed or symbolic, physics-based component with a flexible neural network. A critical challenge, however, is that the neural component may relearn mechanistic parts, yielding redundant and uninterpretable models, especially when the symbolic structure itself is discovered from data. Existing methods based on standard

L^2

regularization rely on a projection argument that breaks when the symbolic component is learned through sparse discovery, allowing the neural augmentation to overlap with symbolic structure. We introduce OrthoReg (Orthogonal Regularization), which directly penalizes overlap between the symbolic and neural components, preventing symbolic structure from being absorbed by the neural residual. This yields a complementary decomposition: the symbolic part captures what the library can express, and the neural part captures what remains. On benchmark dynamical systems with partial library mismatch, OrthoReg improves symbolic recovery and out-of-distribution behavior.

Till Richter, Niki Kilbertus

Technical University of Munich · Helmholtz Munich

Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics Neural Network Interpretability Hybrid Dynamical Systems

Jun 9, 2026

Embedding Hybrid Systems into Continuous Latent Vector Fields

This work proves that an

n

-dimensional hybrid system can be embedded into an

m

-dimensional Euclidean space equipped with a continuous vector field on its embedded image whenever

m>2n

. This result suggests that an intrinsically discontinuous hybrid system generically admits a continuous extrinsic representation that is well-posed for differentiable optimization. Building on this existence theorem, we show that a latent Neural ODE with consistency loss in both the latent and state space can accurately recover the flow of hybrid systems. Extensive experiments suggest the proposed method outperforms the existing method in learning hybrid systems with varying geometries from only time series data.

Sangli Teng, Hang Liu, Koushil Sreenath

University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA · University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Latent Dynamics Modeling System Identification Neural ODEs Hybrid Dynamical Systems

May 6, 2026

Differentiable Parameter Optimization for DAEs with State-Dependent Events

Differential-algebraic equations (DAEs) with state-dependent events arise in systems whose continuous dynamics are constrained by algebraic equations and interrupted by mode changes, switching logic, impacts, or state reinitializations. Gradient-based parameter learning for such systems is challenging because algebraic variables are implicitly defined, event times depend on the parameters, and reset maps introduce discontinuities. This paper studies differentiable parameter optimization for semi-explicit DAEs with events. We formulate the learning problem as a constrained least-squares problem with DAE dynamics, algebraic constraints, guard equations, and reset maps. We then develop two complementary gradient-computation strategies. The first is an automatic-differentiation-through-simulation method that solves algebraic variables inside the vector field, differentiates the algebraic solve using the implicit function theorem, and handles events through segmented differentiable integration. The second is an explicit discrete-adjoint method that represents the forward simulation as an event-split residual system and computes gradients by solving for the Lagrange multipliers of smooth-segment and event residuals. The formulation clarifies that residual terms in the adjoint method are equality constraints, not heuristic penalties. We compare the two approaches in terms of gradient interpretation, event-time handling, implementation complexity, and local validity. Both methods provide gradients for the event path selected by the forward simulation and are valid under fixed event ordering and transversal guard crossings.

Ion Matei, Maksym Zhenirovskyy, Anthony Wong

Fujitsu Research of America

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems Automatic Differentiation Constrained Optimization Differentiable Physics Differentiable Optimization

Apr 24, 2026

Learning Control Policies to Provably Satisfy Hard Affine Constraints for Black-Box Hybrid Dynamical Systems

Ensuring safety for black-box hybrid dynamical systems presents significant challenges due to their instantaneous state jumps and unknown explicit nonlinear dynamics. Existing solutions for strict safety constraint satisfaction, like control barrier functions (CBFs) and reachability analysis, rely on direct knowledge of the dynamics. Similarly, safe reinforcement learning (RL) approaches often rely on known system dynamics or merely discourage safety violations through reward shaping. In this work, we want to learn RL policies which provably satisfy affine state constraints in closed loop for black-box hybrid dynamical systems with affine reset maps. Our key insight is forcing the RL policy to be affine and repulsive near the constraint boundaries for the unknown nonlinear dynamics of the system, providing guarantees that the trajectories will not violate the constraint. We further account for constraint violation due to instantaneous state jumps that occur due to impacts or reset maps in the hybrid system by introducing a second repulsive affine region before the reset that prevents post-reset states from violating the constraint. We derive sufficient conditions under which these policies satisfy safety constraints in closed loop. We also compare our approach with state-of-the-art reward shaping and learned-CBF methods on hybrid dynamical systems like the constrained pendulum and paddle juggler environments. In both scenarios, we show that our methodology learns higher quality policies while always satisfying the safety constraints.

Aayushi Shrivastava, Kartik Nagpal, Sairam Jinkala +2

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems Safety-Critical Control Constrained RL Safe RL

Apr 23, 2026

Model Predictive Control of Hybrid Dynamical Systems

The problem of controlling hybrid dynamical systems using model predictive control (MPC) is formulated and sufficient conditions for asymptotic stability of a set are provided. Hybrid dynamical systems are modeled in terms of hybrid equations, involving a differential equation and a difference equation with inputs and constraints. The proposed hybrid MPC algorithm uses a suitable prediction and control horizon construction inspired by hybrid time domains. Structural properties of the hybrid optimization problem, its feasible set, and its value function are provided. Checkable conditions to guarantee asymptotic stability of a set are provided. These conditions are given in terms of properties on the stage cost, terminal cost, and the existence of static state-feedback laws, related through a control Lyapunov function condition. Examples illustrate the results throughout the paper.

Ricardo G. Sanfelice, Berk Altin

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, 94107 USA

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems Model Predictive Control Optimal Control

Apr 20, 2026

HALO: Hybrid Auto-encoded Locomotion with Learned Latent Dynamics, Poincaré Maps, and Regions of Attraction

Reduced-order models are powerful for analyzing and controlling high-dimensional dynamical systems. Yet constructing these models for complex hybrid systems such as legged robots remains challenging. Classical approaches rely on hand-designed template models (e.g., LIP, SLIP), which, though insightful, only approximate the underlying dynamics. In contrast, data-driven methods can extract more accurate low-dimensional representations, but it remains unclear when stability and safety properties observed in the latent space meaningfully transfer back to the full-order system. To bridge this gap, we introduce HALO (Hybrid Auto-encoded Locomotion), a framework for learning latent reduced-order models of periodic hybrid dynamics directly from trajectory data. HALO employs an autoencoder to identify a low-dimensional latent state together with a learned latent Poincaré map that captures step-to-step locomotion dynamics. This enables Lyapunov analysis and the construction of an associated region of attraction in the latent space, both of which can be lifted back to the full-order state space through the decoder. Experiments on a simulated hopping robot and full-body humanoid locomotion demonstrate that HALO yields low-dimensional models that retain meaningful stability structure and predict full-order region-of-attraction boundaries.

Blake Werner, Sergio A. Esteban, Massimiliano De Sa +2

Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA · NC State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

Dynamical Systems Humanoid Robot Locomotion Latent Dynamics Modeling Reduced-Order Modeling Hybrid Dynamical Systems

Apr 6, 2026

Differentiable Invariant Sets for Hybrid Limit Cycles with Application to Legged Robots

For hybrid systems exhibiting periodic behavior, analyzing the invariant set containing the limit cycle is a natural way to study the robustness of the closed-loop system. However, computing these sets can be computationally expensive, especially when applied to contact-rich cyber-physical systems such as legged robots. In this work, we extend existing methods for overapproximating reachable sets of continuous systems using parametric embeddings to compute a forward-invariant set around the nominal trajectory of a simplified model of a bipedal robot. Our three-step approach (i) computes an overapproximating reachable set around the nominal continuous flow, (ii) catalogs intersections with the guard surface, and (iii) passes these intersections through the reset map. If the overapproximated reachable set after one step is a strict subset of the initial set, we formally verify a forward invariant set for this hybrid periodic orbit. We verify this condition on the bipedal walker model numerically using immrax, a JAX-based library for parametric reachable set computation, and use it within a bi-level optimization framework to design a tracking controller that maximizes the size of the invariant set.

Varun Madabushi, Akash Harapanahalli, Samuel Coogan +1

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA.

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems Reachability Analysis Formal Verification Legged Robotics

Apr 6, 2026

Finite-Step Invariant Sets for Hybrid Systems with Probabilistic Guarantees

Poincare return maps are a fundamental tool for analyzing periodic orbits in hybrid dynamical systems, including legged locomotion, power electronics, and other cyber-physical systems with switching behavior. The Poincare return map captures the evolution of the hybrid system on a guard surface, reducing the stability analysis of a periodic orbit to that of a discrete-time system. While linearization provides local stability information, assessing robustness to disturbances requires identifying invariant sets of the state space under the return dynamics. However, computing such invariant sets is computationally difficult, especially when system dynamics are only available through forward simulation. In this work, we propose an algorithmic framework leveraging sampling-based optimization to compute a finite-step invariant ellipsoid around a nominal periodic orbit using sampled evaluations of the return map. The resulting solution is accompanied by probabilistic guarantees on finite-step invariance satisfying a user-defined accuracy threshold. We demonstrate the approach on two low-dimensional systems and a compass-gait walking model.

Varun Madabushi, Elizabeth Dietrich, Hanna Krasowski +1

Georgia Institute of Technology · University of California, Berkeley

Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems

Mar 1, 2026

Path Integral Particle Filtering for Hybrid Systems via Saltation Matrices

State estimation for hybrid systems that undergo intermittent contact with their environments, such as extraplanetary robots and satellites undergoing docking operations, is difficult due to the discrete uncertainty propagation during contact. To handle this propagation, this paper presents an optimal-control-based particle filtering method that leverages saltation matrices to map out uncertainty propagation during contact events. By exploiting a path integral filtering framework that exploits the duality between smoothing and optimal control, the resulting state estimation algorithm is robust to outlier effects, flexible to non-Gaussian noise distributions, and handles challenging contact dynamics in hybrid systems. To evaluate the validity and consistency of the proposed approach, this paper tests it against strong baselines on the stochastic dynamics generated by a bouncing ball and spring loaded inverted pendulum.

Karthik Shaji, Sreeranj Jayadevan, Bo Yuan +2

Graduate Student, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering · MathWorks · PlusAI +1

Particle Filtering Robot State Estimation Hybrid Dynamical Systems Dynamical Systems