Dynamical Systems

Recent momentum

emerging

0 papers in the last 28 days · 0.0% of indexed attention

Twelve weeks of publication activity for this topic as it is defined today.

Weekly history

Recent digests

What was published in this field, kept on the site without email delivery.

Period ending 2026-09-21

9 new papers

A weekly snapshot of new work published in Dynamical Systems.

Period ending 2026-09-14

2 new papers

A weekly snapshot of new work published in Dynamical Systems.

Period ending 2026-09-07

3 new papers

A weekly snapshot of new work published in Dynamical Systems.

Inside this field

Focused directions

198 papers

Latest in Dynamical Systems

May 19, 2026cs.RO

Reinforcement Learning for Optimal Experiment Design in Parameter Identification of Mechatronic Systems

Informative excitation signals are critical for accurate system identification of mechatronic systems, yet classical system identification (SI) approaches require expert knowledge and hand-crafted signal design to respect hardware safety constraints, limiting their generalizability. We propose a reinforcement learning (RL) agent that learns optimal excitation signals for a Quanser Aero 2 testbed while autonomously enforcing safety constraints through reward shaping. Evaluated across 10 independent training seeds, our comprehensive agent achieves competitive estimation accuracy across all three identified parameters, outperforming classical baselines while incurring only 0.75% safety violations.
Julian Langschwert, Georg Schaefer, Jakob Rehrl +2
May 19, 2026cs.LG

Adynamical systems view of training generativemodels and the memorization phenomenon

Using recent works of one of the authors (VSB) on collapse in generative models and two time scale dynamics in stochastic gradient descent in high dimensions, we give a system theoretic explanation of the memorization phenomenon in generative models. This relies purely on the dynamic aspects of the training phase. Specifically, we use a result of Austin [2016] to motivate a stylized model for the loss function for stochastic gradient descent (SGD) wherein the loss function has a strong dependence on some variables and weak dependence on the rest in a precise sense. This naturally leads to two distinct time scales in the constant step size SGD that is commonly used in machine learning. This fact has been used to explain the double descent phenomenon in SGD in Borkar [2026]. In conjunction with a mathematical model for collapse phenomenon in SGD developed in Borkar [2025a], we analyze the constant step size SGD using the recent results of Azizian et al. [2024] in order to explain the phenomenon of memorization wherein a generative model that is concurrently being tuned yields the same or similar outputs for significant stretches of time. This gives a novel perspective on the aforementioned phenomena reported in machine learning literature and their interrelationships, using a dynamical systems viewpoint.
Siva Athreya, Chiranjib Bhattacharya, Vivek S. Borkar
May 18, 2026cs.RO

Data-Driven Dynamic Modeling of a Tendon-Actuated Continuum Robot

Developing dynamic models for tendon-driven continuum robots is challenging due to their nonlinear, high-dimensional, and friction-dominated dynamics. This paper presents a comparative study of data-driven system identification methods, including N4SID, ARX, and SINDYc, for modeling a tendon-actuated continuum robot with rolling joints developed at CERN. Despite the high number of joints of the robot, experimental analysis reveals that a two-degree-of-freedom dynamic model can accurately capture the system dynamics, owing to strong kinematic dependencies between the joints. The models are validated against experimental data, and used in the design of a model predictive controller, demonstrating their feasibility for real-time control.
Harald Minde Hansen, Bjørn Kåre Sæbø, Kristin Y. Pettersen +2
May 18, 2026stat.ML

Geometric Dictionary Learning of Dynamical Systems with Optimal Transport

Learning dynamical systems through operator-theoretic representations provides a powerful framework for analyzing complex dynamics, as spectral quantities such as eigenvalues and invariant structures encode characteristic time scales and long-term behavior. However, dynamical operators are typically estimated independently for each system, preventing the discovery of shared structure across related dynamics. To address this limitation, we posit that related dynamical systems lie near a low-dimensional manifold in spectral operator space. Based on this hypothesis, we introduce DOODL (Dynamical OperatOr Dictionary Learning), a framework that learns a dictionary of characteristic spectral dynamics whose combinations approximate this manifold and yield compact, interpretable embeddings of individual systems. Beyond representation learning, DOODL enables fast and interpretable operator estimation from short and partially observed trajectories by constraining the estimation to the learned operator manifold. Experiments on metastable Langevin dynamics and turbulent plasma simulations demonstrate that DOODL scales to highly complex multiscale regimes while capturing characteristic spectral structure governing the dynamics rather than merely fitting trajectories, achieving errors one to two orders of magnitude lower than independent operator estimation methods in challenging low-data regimes.
Thibaut Germain, Sami Chemlal, Rémi Flamary +2
May 15, 2026cs.LG

Identify Then Project: Contrastive Learning of Latent Dynamics from Partial Observations with Port-Hamiltonian Structure

Identifying latent state representations and dynamics is essential when direct modeling in observation space is infeasible, particularly under partial and high-dimensional observations. In such settings, representation learning and physics-aware modeling are inherently coupled. We study this problem for latent port-Hamiltonian systems, a structured class encompassing both conservative and dissipative dynamics. We propose a two-stage identify-then-project framework. First, a contrastive teacher learns continuous-time latent dynamics from partial observations. Then, a student projects the identified teacher representation and dynamics onto a port-Hamiltonian submanifold via a learned affine chart, yielding a physically consistent realization. As a conceptual counterfactual, we also consider a single-stage variant that jointly learns latent identification and port-Hamiltonian structure, but find it to be less reliable, motivating the proposed two-stage teacher-student framework. We show theoretically that affine projection is the natural bridge between the affine gauge of contrastive latent identification and the port-Hamiltonian systems. Empirically, we demonstrate that the proposed two-stage approach preserves the teacher's dynamics while enforcing physical structure, and performs more reliably than the single-stage alternative, particularly in dissipative regimes and high-dimensional visual settings.
Peilun Li, Kaiyuan Tan, Daniel Moyer +1
May 15, 2026cs.RO

A Reproducible and Physically Feasible Dynamic Parameter Identification Framework for a Low-Cost Robot Arm

This paper presents a reproducible and physically feasible dynamic parameter identification framework for CRANE-X7, a low-cost robot arm driven by modular smart actuators. To improve practical identifiability, products of inertia are removed according to approximate link symmetry, reducing the rigid-body model from 65 to 39 base parameters. Identification motions are hand-designed from structured single-joint and adjacent-joint primitives under practical joint-range limits. The proposed pipeline combines preprocessing, inverse-dynamics-regressor-based ordinary least squares (OLS), conditional semidefinite-programming (SDP) projection for feasibility recovery, and closed-loop input error (CLIE) refinement. Candidate solutions from 40 structured trajectories are analyzed in a common principal component analysis (PCA) space to select a statistically central representative model. Because statistical centrality alone does not ensure physical acceptability, the selected model is finally screened by an all-pose positive-definiteness audit of the inertia matrix and, when necessary, corrected by a localized post-CLIE SDP rescue step. Experiments show that the parameter cloud becomes progressively more concentrated from OLS to SDP and CLIE, while the final accepted model preserves high predictive accuracy on held-out validation motions. These results demonstrate a practical route to statistically coherent and physically feasible dynamic models for low-cost robot platforms.
Junji Oaki, Koki Yamane, Koki Inami +1
May 14, 2026cs.LG

A Novel Schur-Decomposition-Based Weight Projection Method for Stable State-Space Neural-Network Architectures

Building black-box models for dynamical systems from data is a challenging problem in machine learning, especially when asymptotic stability guarantees are required. In this paper, we introduce a novel stability-ensuring and backpropagation-compatible projection scheme based on the Schur decomposition for the state matrix of linear discrete-time state-space layers, as well as an alternative pre-factorized formulation of the methodology. The proposed methods dynamically project the quasi-triangular factor of the state matrix's real Schur decomposition onto its nearest stable peer, ensuring stable dynamics with minimal overparameterization. Experiments on synthetic linear systems demonstrate that the method achieves accuracy and convergence rates comparable to those of state-of-the-art stable-system identification techniques, despite a marginal increase in computational complexity. Furthermore, the lower weight count facilitates convergence during training without sacrificing accuracy in stacked neural-network architectures with static nonlinearities targeting real-world datasets. These results suggest that the Schur-based projection provides a numerically robust framework for identifying complex dynamics on par with the State of the Art while satisfying strict asymptotic-stability requirements.
Sergio Vanegas, Lasse Lensu, Fredy Ruiz
May 14, 2026eess.SY

Randomized Atomic Feature Models for Physics-Informed Identification of Dynamic Systems

We present a physics-informed framework for system identification based on randomized stable atomic features. Impulse responses are represented as random superpositions of stable atoms, namely damped complex exponentials associated with poles sampled inside a prescribed disk. Identification is then cast as a convex regularized least-squares problem with optional linear, second-order-cone, and KYP constraints. The approach generalizes random Fourier and random Laplace features to the damped, nonstationary regime relevant to engineering systems while retaining modal interpretability and scalable finite-dimensional computation. The main analytic point is an operator-theoretic Disk-Bochner viewpoint: positive measures over stable poles generate positive-definite kernels with a radius-dependent shift defect, while a converse scalar disk moment representation for an arbitrary kernel is characterized by subnormality of the canonical shift. We prove this statement, establish an RKHS-to-l1 embedding, show that sampled poles induce a valid finite atomic gauge, discuss random-feature convergence, and state sparse-recovery guarantees conditionally on the restricted-eigenvalue properties of the realized disk-Vandermonde or input-output design matrix. We also connect the normalized transfer function problem to Nevanlinna-Pick interpolation and LFT set-membership. The framework directly encodes stability margins, modal localization, DC-gain bounds, monotonicity, passivity, relative degree, settling-time targets, and time/frequency-domain error bounds. Numerical comparisons illustrate how physically meaningful priors can compensate for poor excitation and improve constrained impulse-response recovery in an under-informative data setting.
Rajiv Singh, Mario Sznaier, Lennart Ljung
May 14, 2026math.NA

Wavelet-Based Observables for Koopman Analysis: An Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition Framework

We present an in-depth analysis of the Koopman semigroup via wavelet transform. Towards this goal, we start by introducing the wavelet-based observables and show that they are eigenfunctions of the Koopman semigroup when this semigroup is considered over the Banach space of continuous functions on a compact forward-invariant set endowed with the supremum norm. We then construct closed-form expressions of the action of the Koopman semigroup and its resolvent in terms of these observables. To approximate the action of Koopman semigroup numerically, we combine Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) with the proposed wavelet-based observables leading to the Wavelet Dynamic Mode Decomposition via Continuous Wavelet Transform (cWDMD) algorithm. We validate our theoretical results on two numerical examples.
Cankat Tilki, Serkan Gugercin
May 13, 2026stat.ML

Coupling-Informed Transport Maps for Bayesian Filtering in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

A likelihood-free transport filtering method is proposed based on the couplings between state and observation variables. By exploiting a block-triangular structure in the transport map, the analysis step of filtering is reformulated as the minimization of the maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) between the true joint measure and its transport-based approximation. To circumvent the non-convexity in the MMD optimization, we introduce a training-free transport filter method via gradient flows, which leads to an analytic computation for the transport map that implies the steepest descent direction of the MMD. The proposed approach accurately approximates non-Gaussian filtering posteriors and avoids particle collapse. We provide a convergence analysis for the expectation of the MMD between the approximated posterior and the truth posterior. Finally, we extend the method to high-dimensional problems through domain localization. Numerical examples demonstrate the superior performance of our approach over conventional filtering methods in nonlinear, non-Gaussian scenarios.
Dengfei Zeng, Lijian Jiang, Shuyu Sun +1
May 12, 2026cs.LG

Identifying the nonlinear string dynamics with port-Hamiltonian neural networks

Hybrid machine learning combines physical knowledge with data-driven models to enhance interpretability and performance. In this context, Port-Hamiltonian Systems (PHS), which generalize Hamiltonian mechanics to describe open, non-autonomous dynamical systems, have been successfully integrated with neural networks under the name Port-Hamiltonian Neural Networks (PHNNs). While the ability of PHNNs to identify Hamiltonian ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems has already been demonstrated, their application to learning Hamiltonian partial differential equation (PDE) systems remains largely unexplored. This limitation restricts their use in musical acoustics, where instruments are typically modeled as distributed parameter systems governed by PDEs. In this work, we demonstrate how to learn the nonlinear string dynamics from data in a physically-consistent framework through a PHNN extension to PDEs. By constructing structured neural network architectures based on PHS, we can recover both the Hamiltonian governing the string and the dissipation affecting it. This approach outperforms baseline, non-physics-informed methods in terms of both accuracy and interpretability. Numerical experiments using synthetic data demonstrate the ability of the proposed PHNN model to identify and emulate the nonlinear dynamics of the system.
Maximino Linares, Guillaume Doras, Thomas Hélie
May 12, 2026cs.LG

Parallel-in-Time Training of Recurrent Neural Networks for Dynamical Systems Reconstruction

Reconstructing nonlinear dynamical systems (DS) from data (DSR) is a fundamental challenge in science and engineering, but it inherently relies on sequential models. Recent breakthroughs for sequential models have produced algorithms that parallelize computation along sequence length TT, achieving logarithmic time complexity, O(log⁡T)\mathcal{O}(\log T). Since sequence lengths have been practically limited due to the linear runtime complexity O(T)\mathcal{O}(T) of classical backpropagation through time, this opens new avenues for DSR. This paper studies two prominent classes of parallel-in-time algorithms for this task, both of which leverage parallel associative scans as their core computational primitive. The first class comprises models with linear yet non-autonomous dynamics and a nonlinear readout, such as modern State Space Models (SSMs), while the second consists of general nonlinear models which can be parallelized using the DEER framework. We find that the linear training-time recurrence of the first class of models imposes limitations that often hinder learning of accurate nonlinear dynamics. To address this, we augment DEER with Generalized Teacher Forcing (GTF), a novel variant within the more general nonlinear framework that ensures stable and effective learning of nonlinear dynamics across arbitrary sequence lengths. Using GTF-DEER, we investigate the benefits of training on extremely long sequences (T>104T>10^4) for DSR. Our results show that access to such long trajectories significantly improves DSR if the data features long time scales. This work establishes GTF-DEER as a robust tool for data-driven discovery and underscores the largely untapped potential of long-sequence learning in modeling complex DS.
Florian Hess, Florian Götz, Daniel Durstewitz
May 12, 2026cs.LG

In-context learning to predict critical transitions in dynamical systems

Critical transitions - abrupt, often irreversible changes in system dynamics - arise across human and natural systems, often with catastrophic consequences. Real-world observations of such shifts remain scarce, preventing the development of reliable early warning systems. Conventional statistical and spectral indicators, such as increasing variance, tend to fail under realistic conditions of limited data and correlated noise, whereas existing deep learning classifiers do not extrapolate beyond their training data distribution. In this work, we introduce TipPFN, an in-context learning (ICL) framework that uses a prior-data fitted network to infer a system's proximity to a critical transition. Trained on our novel synthetic data generator, which is based on canonical bifurcation scenarios coupled to diverse, randomized stochastic dynamics, TipPFN flexibly capitalizes on contexts of various sizes, complexity and dimensionalities. We demonstrate robust, state-of-the-art early detection of critical transitions in previously unseen tipping regimes, sim-to-real examples, and real-world observations in both ICL and zero-shot settings.
Yunus Sevinchan, Juan Nathaniel, Kai Ueltzhöffer +8
May 12, 2026cs.LG

Limits of Learning Linear Dynamics from Experiments

Learning governing dynamics from data is a common goal across the sciences, yet it is only well-posed when the underlying mechanisms are identifiable. In practice, many data-driven methods implicitly assume identifiability; when this assumption fails, estimated models can yield spurious predictions and invalid mechanistic conclusions. Classical identifiability guarantees for controlled linear time-invariant (LTI) systems provide sufficient conditions -- controllability and persistent excitation -- but leave open whether identifiability holds when these conditions fail, and which parts of the system remain identifiable without full identifiability. We show that the experimental setup, i.e., the realized initial state and control input, dictates a fundamental limit on the information recoverable from the observed trajectory. We develop a geometric characterization of this limit and derive a closed-form description of all systems consistent with the experimental setup. Crucially, we prove that even when the full system is not identifiable, the restricted dynamics on the subspace reachable by the experiment remain uniquely determined.
Aybüke Ulusarslan, Niki Kilbertus, Nora Schneider
May 12, 2026cs.LG

EqOD: Symmetry-Informed Stability Selection for PDE Identification

Data-driven identification of partial differential equations (PDEs) relies on sparse regression over a candidate library of differential operators, where larger libraries inflate false positives under observation noise and smaller libraries risk missing true terms. We introduce Equivariant Operator Discovery (EqOD), a fully automatic method combining two library reduction mechanisms. When Galilean invariance is detected from trajectory data via a weak-form structural test, EqOD uses the symmetry-reduced library, eliminating terms that our Galilean exclusion result proves to be absent from the governing equation. Otherwise, it applies randomized LASSO stability selection guided by classical false-positive bounds. A residual-based fallback prevents degradation below the full-library baseline. On 8 PDEs at 4 noise levels, EqOD attains F1=1.000±0.000F_1 = 1.000 \pm 0.000 on Heat at 20%20\% noise, where WF-LASSO obtains 0.475±0.1810.475 \pm 0.181, official PySINDy 2.0 obtains 0.0000.000, and the WSINDy reimplementation obtains 0.7890.789. Under the strict criterion that the mean F1 difference exceeds the larger of the two standard deviations, EqOD wins 7 of 32 cells. WF-LASSO wins none, and the remaining 25 cells are ties. Across all 32 cells, EqOD outperforms PySINDy 2.0.0 in 23 of 32 cells, and all 5 PySINDy wins occur on reaction PDEs. External validation on WeakIdent and PINN-SR datasets gives F1=1.000F_1 = 1.000 on all 5 clean benchmarks. NLS, 2D, coupled-system, and cylinder-wake extensions are reported. The Galilean library reduction is proved under explicit autonomy and library assumptions. The stability-selection step is motivated by classical false-positive bounds, while formal guarantees for correlated PDE design matrices remain open.
Gnankan Landry Regis N'guessan, Bum Jun Kim
May 12, 2026cs.LG

Beyond Prediction: Interval Neural Networks for Uncertainty-Aware System Identification

System identification (SysID) is critical for modeling dynamical systems from experimental data, yet traditional approaches often fail to capture nonlinear behaviors. While deep learning offers powerful tools for modeling such dynamics, incorporating uncertainty quantification is essential to ensure reliable predictions. This paper presents a systematic framework for constructing and training interval Neural Networks (INNs) for uncertainty-aware SysID. By extending crisp neural networks into interval counterparts, we develop Interval LSTM and NODE models that propagate uncertainty through interval arithmetic without probabilistic assumptions. This design allows them to represent uncertainty and produce prediction intervals. For training, we propose two strategies: Cascade INN (C-INN), a two-stage approach converting a trained crisp NN into an INN, and Joint INN (J-INN), a one-stage framework jointly optimizing prediction accuracy and interval precision. Both strategies employ uncertainty-aware loss functions and parameterization tricks to ensure reliable learning. Comprehensive experiments on multiple SysID datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of both approaches and benchmark their performance against well-established uncertainty-aware baselines: C-INN achieves superior point prediction accuracy, whereas J-INN yields more accurate and better-calibrated prediction intervals. Furthermore, to reveal how uncertainty is represented across model parameters, the concept of channel-wise elasticity is introduced, which is used to identify distinct patterns across the two training strategies. The results of this study demonstrate that the proposed framework effectively integrates deep learning with uncertainty-aware modeling.
Mehmet Ali Ferah, Tufan Kumbasar
May 11, 2026cs.AI

ASIA: an Autonomous System Identification Agent

Over the years, research in system identification has provided a rich set of methods for learning dynamical models, together with well-established theoretical guarantees. In practice, however, the choice of model class, training algorithm, and hyperparameter tuning is still largely left to empirical trial-and-error, requiring substantial expert time and domain experience. Motivated by recent advances in agentic artificial intelligence, we present ASIA, a framework that delegates this iterative search to a large language model acting as an autonomous coding agent. Building on existing agentic platforms, ASIA closes the loop between hypothesis, implementation, and evaluation without human intervention, requiring only a plain-English description of the identification problem. We conduct an empirical study of ASIA on two system identification benchmarks and analyse the agent's search behaviour, the architectures and training strategies it discovers, and the quality of the resulting models. We also discuss the potential of the approach and its current limitations, including implicit test leakage, reduced methodological transparency, and reproducibility concerns.
Dario Piga, Marco Forgione
May 10, 2026cs.LG

Discovery of Nonlinear Dynamics with Automated Basis Function Generation

Discovering governing equations from observational data remains a fundamental challenge in scientific modeling, particularly when the underlying mathematical structure is unknown. Traditional sparse identification methods like SINDy excel at discovering parsimonious models but require researchers to specify candidate basis functions a priori, a limitation that often leads to model failure when critical terms are omitted or when systems exhibit unconventional dynamics. Purely symbolic regression approaches offer unlimited flexibility but struggle with noise sensitivity and frequently produce overly complex, unstable equations. We present AutoSINDy, a hybrid Discovery-then-Solve framework that combines the exploratory power of symbolic regression with the robust sparsity-promoting capabilities of SINDy. Our method operates in three stages: (1) PySR-based symbolic regression discovers candidate functional forms from bootstrapped data chunks; (2) a curation pipeline decomposes, expands, and filters these expressions using collinearity analysis to construct a minimal yet comprehensive library; and (3) SINDy identifies sparse governing equations from this custom-tailored library. Extensive experiments across canonical nonlinear systems demonstrate that AutoSINDy consistently recovers ground-truth equations even under high observational noise, achieving a ground-truth recovery rate of 92.8% across all trials. Compared with standard SINDy using enriched libraries and standalone symbolic regression, AutoSINDy achieves higher predictive accuracy, superior generalization to unseen trajectories, and substantially lower symbolic complexity.
Mohammad Amin Basiri, Charles Nicholson
May 9, 2026physics.comp-ph

Nonlinear GENERIC Informed Neural Networks (N-GINNs): learning GENERIC dynamics with non-quadratic dissipation potentials

We introduce Nonlinear GENERIC Informed Neural Networks (N-GINNs), a deep learning framework for discovering evolution equations of systems governed by the nonlinear GENERIC formalism (General Equation for Non-Equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling). Such systems exhibit coupled conservative and dissipative dynamics, and can be described via the superposition of a Hamiltonian flow and a generalized gradient flow. In contrast to existing approaches, our formulation incorporates generalized gradient flows via convex dissipation potentials, enabling the identification of a broader class of thermodynamically consistent dynamics, including systems with non-quadratic dissipation potentials. Thermodynamic structure is strongly enforced by construction through suitable reparameterizations of both the bivector operator and the dissipation potential, ensuring exact compliance with the first and second laws of thermodynamics. We validate the proposed approach on three representative examples: a harmonic oscillator coupled to a heat bath, an idealized chemical motor, and a one-dimensional viscoplastic model of Perzyna type. These results demonstrate the method's ability to accurately infer thermodynamically consistent models from data for systems incorporating both conservative and nonlinear dissipative dynamics.
Vojtěch Votruba, Zequn He, Weilun Qiu +2
May 8, 2026eess.SY

A Behavioral Framework for Data-Driven Modeling of Nonlinear Systems in Vector-Valued Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces

We generalize Jan Willems' behavioral approach to a class of discrete-time nonlinear systems in a vector-valued reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). Apart from linear time-invariant systems, this class covers nonlinear systems modeled by Volterra series and their autoregressive variants, as well as systems admitting Hammerstein-type state-space realizations. We apply the proposed framework to the problem of data-driven modeling of such systems, i.e., when simulation or control objectives for an unknown system are carried out without an explicit system identification step. To that end, we link the behavioral approach to two data-driven modeling methods in a vector-valued RKHS: (1) minimum-norm interpolation and (2) subspace identification.
Boya Hou, Maxim Raginsky
May 7, 2026cs.CV

Solving Minimal Problems Without Matrix Inversion Using FFT-Based Interpolation

Estimating camera geometry typically involves solving minimal problems formulated as systems of multivariate polynomial equations, which often pose computational challenges when using existing Gröbner-basis or resultant-based methods due to matrix inversion needed in the online solver. Here we propose a sampling-based, matrix inversion-free method that constructs the solvers using sparse hidden-variable resultants. The determinant polynomial in the hidden variable is efficiently reconstructed via inverse fast Fourier transform interpolation from sampled evaluations, avoiding symbolic expansion. Solving this polynomial yields the hidden variable, and the remaining unknowns are recovered by identifying rank-1 deficient submatrices and applying Cramer's rule. A greatest common divisor-based criterion ensures robust submatrix identification under noise. Experiments on diverse minimal problems demonstrate that the proposed solver achieves strong numerical stability and competitive runtime, particularly for small-scale problems, providing a practical alternative to traditional Gröbner-basis and resultant-based solvers.
Haidong Wu, Snehal Bhayani, Janne Heikkilä
May 7, 2026cs.HC

Human-AI Co-Evolution and Epistemic Collapse: A Dynamical Systems Perspective

Large language models (LLMs) are reshaping how knowledge is produced, with increasing reliance on AI systems for generation, summarization, and reasoning. While prior work has studied cognitive offloading in humans and model collapse in recursive training, these effects are typically considered in isolation. We propose a unified perspective: humans and language models form a coupled dynamical system linked by a feedback loop of usage, generation, and retraining. We introduce a minimal model with three variables -- human cognition, data quality, and model capability -- and show that this feedback can give rise to distinct dynamical regimes. Our analysis identifies three regimes: co-evolutionary enhancement, fragile equilibrium, and degenerative convergence. Through a simple simulation, we demonstrate that increasing reliance on AI can induce a transition toward a low-diversity, suboptimal equilibrium. From an information-theoretic perspective, this transition corresponds to an emergent information bottleneck in the human-AI loop, where entropy reduction reflects loss of diversity and support under closed-loop feedback rather than beneficial compression. These results suggest that the trajectory of AI systems is shaped not only by model design, but by the dynamics of human-AI co-evolution.
Xuening Wu, Yanlan Kang, Qianya Xu +5
May 7, 2026stat.ML

End-to-End Identifiable and Consistent Recurrent Switching Dynamical Systems

Learning identifiable representations in deep generative models remains a fundamental challenge, particularly for sequential data with regime-switching dynamics. Existing approaches establish identifiability under restrictive assumptions, such as stationarity or limited emission models, and typically rely on variational autoencoder (VAE) estimators, which introduce approximation gaps that limit the recovery of the latent structure. In this work, we address both the theoretical and practical limitations of this setting. First, we establish identifiability of a broad class of recurrent nonlinear switching dynamical systems under flexible assumptions, significantly extending prior results. Second, we introduce ΩΩSDS, a flow-based estimator that enables exact likelihood optimization using expectation-maximisation. Through empirical validation on both synthetic and real-world data, our results demonstrate that ΩΩSDS achieves improved disentanglement compared to VAE-based estimators and more accurate forecasting of underlying dynamics.
Carles Balsells-Rodas, Zhengrui Xiang, Xavier Sumba +1
May 7, 2026cs.LG

Physical Fidelity Reconstruction via Improved Consistency-Distilled Flow Matching for Dynamical Systems

Reconstructing high-fidelity flow fields from low-fidelity observations is a central problem in scientific machine learning, yet recent diffusion and flow-matching models typically rely on iterative sampling, making them costly for latency-sensitive workflows such as ensemble forecasting, real-time visualization, and simulation-in-the-loop inference. We study whether a high-fidelity flow-matching generative model can be compressed into a compact one-step model for fast scientific flow reconstruction. Our approach distills an optimal-transport flow-matching teacher into a one-step consistency model. Low-fidelity observations are incorporated at inference by initializing the generative trajectory from a noised observation along the transport path, allowing an unconditional high-fidelity flow model to perform conditional reconstruction without retraining the teacher. We evaluate this distillation strategy on three fluid benchmarks, Smoke Buoyancy, Turbulent Channel Flow, and Kolmogorov Flow, using coarse-to-fine reconstruction as a controlled testbed at field sizes up to 256×256256 \times 256. Across these settings, the distilled student retains similar performance of the teacher's model on spectrum metrics, while using roughly half as many parameters and achieving a 12×12\times inference speedup over the flow-matching teacher. Under the same training budget, the distilled student also outperforms a one-step consistency model trained directly from scratch by 23.1%23.1\% in SSIM, showing that teacher distillation improves training efficiency rather than merely accelerating sampling. These results suggest a promising route for turning future high-capacity scientific generative models into compact reconstruction models that are faster to train, cheaper to run, and easier to deploy.
Sicheng Ma, Tianyue Yang, Xiuzhe Wu +1
May 6, 2026cs.RO

Robust H∞\mathcal{H}_\infty Controller Design For INDI-Controlled Quadrotor Using Online Parameter Identification

It has recently been shown that all physical parameters of an Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) controller can be estimated onboard a multirotor within half a second, which is fast enough to do the full identification during a throw in the air. However, a robust method to tune outer loop gains for this feedback-linearizing INDI controller depending on the model parameters is still missing. This work presents the design of a robust gain-scheduled controller for attitude control of quadrotor, using an INDI-based inner loop with online identification of its system parameters. A gain-scheduled cascaded attitude controller with a feedforward filter is synthesized for a symmetric quadrotor using signal-based H∞\mathcal{H}_\infty closed-loop shaping. The resulting controller exhibits good stability margins, with nonlinear simulations confirming effective tracking performance under uncertainty. Experimental evaluation is also conducted through flight tests with full online parameter identification. Even though the identified parameters during these tests are far outside the defined uncertainty range, acceptable flight performance comparable to simulation results is maintained for actuator time constants below 40 ms.
Tom Aantjes, Till M. Blaha, Spilios Theodoulis +1
May 6, 2026cs.LG

Low-Cost Black-Box Detection of LLM Hallucinations via Dynamical System Prediction

Large Language Models (LLMs) frequently generate plausible but non-factual content, a phenomenon known as hallucination. While existing detection methods typically rely on computationally expensive sampling-based consistency checks or external knowledge retrieval, we propose a new method that treats the LLM as a black-box dynamical system. By projecting LLM responses into a high-dimensional manifold via an embedding model, we characterize the resulting vector sequences as observable realizations of the model's latent state-space dynamics. Leveraging Koopman operator theory, we fit the transition operators for both factual and hallucinated regimes and define a differential residual score based on their respective prediction errors. To accommodate varying user requirements and domain-specific sensitivities, we introduce a preference-aware calibration mechanism that optimizes the classification threshold based on a small set of demonstrations. This approach enables low-cost hallucination detection in a single-sample pass, avoiding the need for secondary sampling or external grounding. Extensive testing across three data benchmarks demonstrates that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance with reduced resource overhead.
Dan Wilson, Mohamed Akrout
May 6, 2026cs.LG

Koopman Identification of Nonlinear Systems via Reservoir Liftings

Learning tractable linear representations of nonlinear dynamical systems via Koopman operator theory is often hindered by dictionary selection, temporal memory encoding, and numerical ill-conditioning. Inspired by Reservoir Computing (RC) paradigm, this paper introduces the RC-Koopman framework, which interprets reservoir as a stateful, finite-dimensional Koopman dictionary whose temporal depth is explicitly controlled by its spectral radius. We show that the Echo State Property (ESP) guarantees well-posedness and favorable numerical conditioning of the lifted Koopman approximation. A correlation-based spectral radius selection algorithm aligns reservoir memory with dominant system timescales. Analysis reveals how the finite memory of the reservoir determines which Koopman eigenfunctions remain observable from the lifted features. Evaluation on synthetic benchmarks demonstrates that RC-Koopman achieves a favorable balance between reconstruction accuracy of the underlying nonlinear dynamics and dynamical stability, compared to Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) and Hankel-based lifting approaches. Code available at: https://github.com/NEAR-the-future/RC-Koopman.git
Weibin Gu, Chen Yang, Lu Shi
May 5, 2026cs.LG

Model synthesis and identifiability analysis of stiff chemical reaction systems with inVAErt networks

We consider the problem of learning data-driven replicas for stiff systems of ordinary differential equations arising in chemical kinetics that can be evaluated with high computational efficiency. We first focus on training emulators for families of reaction equations under varying reaction rates, using conditional residual networks or long-short term memory architectures. We then apply a recently proposed data-driven framework known as ``inVAErt networks'' to address the ill-posed inverse problem of inferring reaction rates, integration time, and possibly initial conditions from a target set of species concentrations - a problem that has received relatively little attention in the literature. The proposed approach is demonstrated on chemical systems with reversible and irreversible kinetics, spanning 2 to 20 differential equations, 3 to 20 chemical species, and 3 to 25 reaction rate parameters. Relative root mean squared errors produced by the proposed emulators range from 10−510^{-5} for lower-dimensional systems to 10−410^{-4} and 10−310^{-3} for an air pollution model and a hydrogen-air reaction system, respectively. Manifolds of non-identifiable reaction rates recovered by the proposed approach can be analytically verified for simple systems and are consistent with local identifiability analysis in higher dimensions.
Sreejata Dey, Guoxiang Grayson Tong, Jonathan F. MacArt +1
May 5, 2026cs.NE

Unifying Dynamical Systems and Graph Theory to Mechanistically Understand Computation in Neural Networks

Understanding how biological and artificial neural networks implement computation from connectivity is a central problem in neuroscience and machine learning. In neural systems, structural and functional connectivity are known to diverge, motivating approaches that move beyond direct connections alone. Here, we show that the spatial and temporal function of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) trained on hierarchically modular tasks can be recovered by modelling the network as a graph and analysing the multi-hop pathways between input and output units. In particular, decomposing these pathways by hop length reveals how the network temporally routes information. This perspective reframes regularisation: if function is implemented through multi-hop communication, then standard penalties such as L1 regularisation, which act only on individual weights, constrain single-hop structure rather than the multi-hop pathways that support computation. Motivated by this view, we introduce resolvent-RNNs (R-RNNs), which constrain multi-hop pathways and thereby induce temporal sparsity beyond that achieved by standard L1 regularisation. Compared with L1 regularisation, R-RNNs achieve improved performance by inducing temporal sparsity that matches the task structure, even when the task signal is sparse. Moreover, R-RNNs exhibit stronger sparsity-function alignment, reflected in their increased robustness under strong regularisation. Together, our results identify multi-hop communication as a key principle linking structure to function in recurrent networks, and suggest that sparsity should be defined over functional pathways rather than individual parameters.
Jatin Sharma, Dan F. M Goodman, Danyal Akarca
May 5, 2026cs.LG

Physics-Modeled Neural Networks

We introduce \emph{Dynamical Physics-Modeled Neural Networks} (DynPMNNs), a continuous-time deep learning architecture in which each hidden layer is defined as the solution of an ordinary differential equation. Unlike classical feed-forward networks, this approach replaces static activation functions with time-evolving dynamical systems, providing a biologically inspired interpretation of hidden-layer behavior and enabling the integration of physically meaningful models. The framework is rigorously grounded in Reproducing Kernel Banach Spaces (RKBSs), allowing DynPMNNs to be characterized as finite-dimensional solutions of an abstract training problem and revealing structural connections with standard neural networks. We present a concrete implementation based on the FitzHugh--Nagumo model for neuronal activation, where numerical ODE solvers are embedded into the computational graph via Euler-type schemes. Both network weights and dynamical parameters are trained jointly. Through experiments on the California Housing dataset, we compare DynPMNNs with Neural ODEs (NODEs) and Closed-form Continuous-Time Networks (CfCs). Despite using fewer trainable parameters, DynPMNNs achieve competitive performance. These results position DynPMNNs as a principled bridge between dynamical systems and deep learning, with promising directions for further research in expressivity, stability, and physics-based modeling.
Raul Felipe-Sosa, Angel Martin del Rey, Maria Flores Ceballos
May 5, 2026cs.RO

Robust Path Tracking for Vehicles via Continuous-Time Residual Learning: An ICODE-MPPI Approach

Model Predictive Path Integral (MPPI) control is a powerful sampling-based strategy for nonlinear autonomous systems. However, its performance is often bottlenecked by the fidelity of nominal dynamics. We propose ICODE-MPPI, a robust framework that leverages Input Concomitant Neural Ordinary Differential Equations (ICODEs) to learn and compensate for unmodeled residual dynamics. Unlike discrete-time learners, ICODEs maintain physical consistency and temporal continuity during the MPPI prediction horizon. High-fidelity simulations on complex trajectories demonstrate that ICODE-MPPI achieves up to a 69% reduction in cross-tracking error under persistent disturbances compared to standard MPPI control. Furthermore, our analysis confirms that ICODE-MPPI significantly suppresses control chattering, yielding smoother steering commands and superior robust performance.
Shugen Song, Wenjie Mei, Chengyan Zhao
May 4, 2026stat.ML

Dynamic Vine Copulas: Detecting and Quantifying Time-Varying Higher-Order Interactions

Time-varying dependence is often modeled with dynamic correlations or Gaussian graphical models, but multivariate systems can change through tail behavior, asymmetry, or conditional structure even when correlations are nearly stable. We introduce Dynamic Vine Copulas (DVC), a temporal vine-copula framework for estimating and diagnosing sequence-wide non-Gaussian dependence. DVC fixes a chosen vine factorization for comparability; the framework applies to C-, D-, and R-vines, and our experiments use fixed-root-order C-vines. Pair-copula states evolve through smooth parameter trajectories or temporally regularized family-switching paths. The main diagnostic is a held-out comparison between a full vine and its matched 1-truncated version, which separates flexible first-tree pairwise dependence from evidence contributed by higher-tree conditional terms. At the population level, under a correct fixed vine and the simplifying assumption, this contrast equals the higher-tree component of a vine total-correlation decomposition; in finite samples, it is a predictive diagnostic. In controlled benchmarks, DVC detects Student-t degrees-of-freedom changes, Clayton-to-Gumbel switches, and recurrent conditional-interaction episodes missed or conflated by Gaussian dynamic baselines. The higher-tree score remains near zero in pairwise-only regimes and rises during conditional-interaction regimes. On Allen Visual Behavior Neuropixels data, DVC identifies a reproducible time-indexed higher-tree signal that is positive across held-out splits and vanishes under a decorrelated null, indicating simultaneous cross-area dependence. DVC therefore provides a flexible temporal copula model and an interpretable test of whether temporal dependence changes are pairwise or conditional.
Houman Safaai, Alessandro Marin Vargas
May 4, 2026eess.SY

Set-Based Training of Neural Barrier Certificates for Safety Verification of Dynamical Systems

Barrier certificates are scalar functions over the state space of dynamical systems that separate all unsafe states from all reachable states. The existence of a barrier certificate formally verifies the safety of the dynamical system. Recent approaches synthesize barrier certificates by iteratively training a neural network. In each iteration, the candidate is formally verified - if successful, the barrier certificate is found. Instead, we propose a set-based training approach that tightly integrates verification into training via a set-based loss function that soundly encodes all barrier certificate properties. A loss of zero formally proves the validity of the barrier certificate, collapsing the iterative training and verification into a single training procedure. Our experiments demonstrate that our set-based training approach scales well with the system dimension and naturally handles complex nonlinear dynamics.
Miriam Kranzlmüller, Lukas Koller, Tobias Ladner +1
May 4, 2026cs.LG

ZNO: Stable Rational Neural Operators in the Z-Domain for Discrete-Time Dynamics

We introduce the Z-Domain Neural Operator (ZNO), a causal neural operator whose layers are stable low-rank multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) rational filters parameterized directly in the zz-plane. ZNO addresses a limitation of existing operator learning methods, many of which are primarily tailored for continuous-time problems, while a large class of system-identification problems is intrinsically discrete-time. The zz-domain form expresses stability as a unit-disk pole constraint and makes learned discrete-time poles directly readable. The model combines low-rank channel mixing, smooth stable pole reparameterization, causal recurrence, and an optional short finite impulse response (FIR) branch in a single zz-domain rational recurrent layer. Across controlled discrete system-identification experiments, ZNO's advantage is most evident when the target dynamics are stable rational systems with lightly damped poles near the unit circle. Under matched parameter budgets, ZNO is not uniformly dominant; however, with validation-selected configurations, the same architecture can achieve the lowest mean error across the controlled tasks. A five-bin difficulty sweep over near-unit-circle / long-memory dynamics shows that ZNO has the lowest mean error across memory regimes, from short (approximately 10 steps) to long (approximately 100-200 steps). On five public nonlinear system-identification benchmarks, ZNO is competitive with neural operator and state-space baselines, achieving the lowest mean error on benchmarks whose dynamics align with stable rational discrete-time filters, while classical or state-space baselines remain preferable on some systems. These results position ZNO as a strong model for stable rational discrete-time dynamics, especially in near-unit-circle and long-memory regimes, but not as a universal replacement for specialized system-identification methods.
Xianli Zhu, Jia Yin
May 4, 2026cs.RO

Natural Gradient Bayesian Filtering: Geometry-Aware Filter for Dynamical Systems

Bayesian filtering is a cornerstone of state estimation in complex systems such as aerospace systems, yet exact solutions are available only for linear Gaussian models. In practice,nonlinear systems are handled through tractable approximations,with Gaussian filters such as the extended and unscented Kalman filters being among the most widely used methods. This tutorial revisits Gaussian filtering from an information-geometric perspective, viewing the prediction and measurement update steps as inference procedures over state distributions. Within this framework, we introduce a geometry-aware Gaussian filtering approach that leverages natural gradient descent on the statistical manifold of Gaussian distributions. The resulting Natural Gradient Gaussian Approximation (NANO) filter iteratively refines the posterior mean and covariance while respecting the intrinsic geometry of the Gaussian family and preserving the positive definiteness of the covariance matrix. We further highlight fundamental connections to the classical Kalman filtering, showing that a single natural-gradient step exactly recovers the Kalman measurement update in the linear-Gaussian case. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated through case studies in representative nonlinear estimation problems,including satellite attitude estimation, simultaneous localization and mapping, and state estimation for robotic systems including quadruped and humanoid robots.
Chang Liu, Wenhan Cao, Zeju Sun +8
May 3, 2026cs.LG

Learning Koopman operators for coupled systems via information on governing equations of subsystems

Nonlinear coupled systems are ubiquitous in science and engineering. The analysis and modeling of such systems is challenging due to their high dimensionality and complex interactions among subsystems. In recent years, operator-theoretic methods based on the Koopman operator have attracted attention as a powerful tool for analyzing and modeling nonlinear dynamical systems. Extended dynamic mode decomposition (EDMD) is one of the most popular methods to approximate the Koopman operator. However, EDMD is a purely data-driven method, and it could be unstable and inaccurate for coupled systems under limited data availability. In this paper, we propose a method to learn the Koopman operator for coupled systems using the differential equations governing each subsystem. We also demonstrate its effectiveness through numerical experiments on coupled oscillator systems.
Tatsuya Naoi, Jun Ohkubo
May 1, 2026cs.LG

Observable Performance Does Not Fully Reflect Adaptive System Organization: A Multi-Level Analysis of Gait Dynamics Under Occlusal Constraint

In biomechanical systems, observable performance is often used as a proxy for underlying organization, although similar outputs may arise from different adaptive configurations. This study considers the vertical dimension of occlusion (VDO) as a constraint applied to an adaptive neuromechanical system. A single-case design in a patient with Parkinson's disease enabled repeated intra-individual gait observations under six occlusal probes. Three complementary analytical levels were examined: (i) an aggregated scalar score of observable performance, (ii) a conceptual dynamical systems framework, and (iii) an exploratory UMAP representation of 55 standardized biomechanical variables from 270 M1 observations. The revised Level 1 analysis showed that the relative ranking of OC2.5 and OC3 depended on score construction, while their scalar distributions remained close. The Level 3 embedding showed substantial overlap among all six probes and did not identify independently separated condition-specific clusters. OC2.5 and OC3 displayed limited centroid displacement but broad observation-level overlap. The principal result is therefore representational non-identifiability: neither the aggregated score nor the selected low-dimensional embedding uniquely identifies an occlusal-condition-specific system state. VDO is interpreted as a constraint parameter rather than a causal determinant. The findings are exploratory, model dependent, and non causal. They do not establish distinct physiological states, an optimal VDO, clinical thresholds, or diagnostic, predictive, mechanistic, or prescriptive validity.
Jacques Raynal, Pierre Slangen, Elsa Raynal +1
May 1, 2026eess.SP

Equation-Free Digital Twins for Nonlinear Structural Dynamics

Monitoring high-dimensional engineering structures in extreme environments is limited by non-stationary excitation, nonlinear structural kinematics, and stochastic forcing. Traditional model-based and black-box data-driven methods often struggle to resolve these dynamics in real time, particularly under sensor failure or partial observability. This paper introduces a rank-optimized digital twin framework based on Koopman operator theory, Hankel-matrix embeddings, and dynamic mode decomposition. By lifting operational data into a linear invariant subspace, the method enables autonomous, input-blind reconstruction of structural states without requiring a priori mass or stiffness matrices. The framework is validated on an NREL 5MW spar-buoy floating offshore wind turbine, representing a challenging coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic system. Results show that the rank-optimized Koopman-Hankel manifold separates structural resonances from deterministic 3P rotor harmonics under colored noise, where standard subspace identification can be unreliable. A rolling-horizon virtual sensing strategy achieves high-fidelity reconstruction at critical structural hotspots, with coefficient of determination greater than 0.95 at 1 Hz data assimilation and accuracy exceeding 0.99 at higher sampling rates. By estimating a physical Lyapunov time of approximately 1.0 s, the study defines the predictability horizon associated with the system information barrier. The proposed framework provides a computationally efficient and resilient digital twin approach for real-time identification and virtual sensing of complex structural dynamics.
Mohammad Mahdi Abaei, Ahmad BahooToroody, Arttu Polojärvi +4
May 1, 2026cs.NE

Geometric and dynamical analysis of attractor boundaries and storage limits in kernel Hopfield networks

High-capacity associative memories based on Kernel Logistic Regression (KLR) exhibit strong storage capabilities, but the dynamical and geometric mechanisms underlying their stability remain poorly understood. This paper investigates the global geometry of attractor basins and the mechanisms governing the storage limit in KLR-trained Hopfield networks. We combine empirical evaluations using random sequences and real-world image embeddings (CIFAR-10) with morphing experiments and statistical Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) analysis. Our experiments show that the network achieves a storage capacity for random sequences up to P/N≈16P/N \approx 16, while maintaining stable retrieval for structured data at effective loads near P/N≈20P/N \approx 20. Morphing analysis indicates that attractors on the "Ridge of Optimization" are separated by sharp, phase-transition-like boundaries, characterized by steep effective potential barriers and critical slowing down. Furthermore, by comparing an SNR analysis with a geometric reference point inspired by Cover's theorem, we show that the practical storage limit is governed primarily not by a lack of geometric separability in the feature space, but by the loss of dynamical stability against crosstalk noise. These findings suggest that KLR networks function as highly localized exemplar-based memories that operate near the onset of dynamical collapse, providing a useful perspective on the design of robust, large-scale retrieval systems.
Akira Tamamori
Apr 30, 2026cs.RO

RopeDreamer: A Kinematic Recurrent State Space Model for Dynamics of Flexible Deformable Linear Objects

The robotic manipulation of Deformable Linear Objects (DLOs) is a fundamental challenge due to the high-dimensional, non-linear dynamics of flexible structures and the complexity of maintaining topological integrity during contact-rich tasks. While recent data-driven methods have utilized Recurrent and Graph Neural Networks for dynamics modeling, they often struggle with self-intersections and non-physical deformations, such as tangling and link stretching. In this paper, we propose a latent dynamics framework that combines a Recurrent State Space Model with a Quaternionic Kinematic Chain representation to enable robust, long-term forecasting of DLO states. By encoding the DLO as a sequence of relative rotations (quaternions) rather than independent Cartesian positions, we inherently constrain the model to a physically valid manifold that preserves link-length constancy. Furthermore, we introduce a dual-decoder architecture that decouples state reconstruction from future-state prediction, forcing the latent space to capture the underlying physics of deformation. We evaluate our approach on a large-scale simulated dataset of complex pick-and-place trajectories involving self-intersections. Our results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a 40.52% reduction in open-loop prediction error over 50-step horizons compared to the state-of-the-art baseline, while reducing inference time by 31.17%. Our model further maintains superior topological consistency in scenarios with multiple crossings, proving its efficacy as a compositional primitive for long-horizon manipulation planning.
Tim Missal, Lucas Domingues, Berk Guler +3
Apr 30, 2026cs.LG

Toward Scalable SDN for LEO Mega-Constellations: A Graph Learning Approach

Terrestrial network limitations drive the integration of non-terrestrial networks (NTNs), notably mega-constellations comprising thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. While these satellites act as interconnected network switches via inter-satellite links (ISLs), their massive scale creates severe bottlenecks for network management. To address this, we propose a scalable, hierarchical software-defined networking (SDN) framework. Our architecture leverages graph neural networks (GNNs) to compactly represent the constellation topology, and Koopman theory to linearize nonlinear dynamics. Specifically, a Graph Koopman Autoencoder (GKAE) forecasts spatio-temporal behavior within a linear subspace for each orbital shell. A central SDN controller then aggregates these shell-level predictions for globally coordinated control. Simulations on the Starlink constellation demonstrate that our approach achieves at least a 42.8% improvement in spatial compression and a 10.81% improvement in temporal forecasting compared to established baselines, all while utilizing a significantly smaller model footprint.
Sivaram Krishnan, Bassel Al Homssi, Zhouyou Gu +3
Apr 29, 2026cs.LG

PiGGO: Physics-Guided Learnable Graph Kalman Filters for Virtual Sensing of Nonlinear Dynamic Structures under Uncertainty

Digital twins provide a powerful paradigm for diagnostic and prognostic tasks in the monitoring and control of engineered systems; however, their deployment for complex structures remains challenged by model-form uncertainty, arising from unknown nonlinear dynamics, and by sparse sensing. These limitations hinder reliable online state estimation using either purely physics-based or purely data-driven approaches. This work introduces the Physics-Guided Graph Neural ODE (PiGGO) framework, a physics-informed, graph-based Bayesian state estimation approach in which a learned graph neural ordinary differential equation (GNODE) serves as the continuous-time state-transition model within an extended Kalman filter. The graph representation explicitly defines the system state-space, while physics-guided inductive biases encode known structural relationships and constrain the learning of nonlinear dynamics. By integrating graph-native learned dynamics with recursive Bayesian filtering, the proposed PiGGO framework enables online virtual sensing and uncertainty-aware state estimation for nonlinear systems with unknown model form, while maintaining generalisation across topologically similar structures. Numerical case studies demonstrate improved robustness to model uncertainty and measurement noise, outperforming both open-loop graph neural models and conventional filtering approaches in online prediction tasks.
Marcus Haywood-Alexander, Gregory Duthé, Eleni Chatzi
Apr 28, 2026stat.ML

Residual-loss Anomaly Analysis of Physics-Informed Neural Networks: An Inverse Method for Change-point Detection in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Regime Switching

Nonlinear dynamical systems with regime transitions are typically described by ordinary differential equations with jumping parameters parameters. Traditional methods often treat change-point detection and parameter estimation as separate tasks, ignoring the inherent coupling between them. To address this, we propose residual-loss anomaly analysis of physics-informed neural networks, a unified framework that leverages dynamical consistency within the physics-informed learning paradigm. This approach jointly infers piecewise parameters and transition points under a single set of constraints. The method follows a two-stage strategy: First, local physical residuals are analyzed through overlapping subinterval decomposition. When a subinterval spans a true transition point, the residual exhibits a distinct structural elevation in noise-free conditions, which has a non-zero lower bound, enabling effective localization of potential transition intervals. Second, within our framework, change-point locations and piecewise parameters are integrated into a unified physical loss function for joint optimization, enabling simultaneous identification. Experiments on benchmark nonlinear dynamical systems, including Malthusian and logistic growth models, Van der Pol oscillator, Lotka-Volterra model and Lorenz system, demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms traditional decoupled approaches in both change-point localization and parameter estimation accuracy. This study provides an efficient, unified solution for structurally coupled inverse problems in nonlinear dynamical systems with regime switching.
Yuhe Bai, Chengli Tan, Jiaqi Li +2
Apr 28, 2026math.OC

From Cursed to Competitive: Closing the ZO-FO Gap via Input-to-State Stability

While it is generally understood that zeroth-order (ZO) algorithms have an extra dependency on their number of iterations for any choice of parameters, compared to their first-order (FO) counterparts, in this work, we show that under several conditions, in expectation, ZO methods do not suffer from extra dimension dependencies in their convergence rates with respect to their FO counterparts. We look at optimisation algorithms from the dynamical systems perspective and analyse the conditions under which one can formulate the average of a ZO algorithm as the average of its FO counterpart with bounded perturbations with values dependent on design parameters. Then, using input-to-state stability properties, we show ZO methods follow the same decay rate as their FO counterparts and converge to a neighbourhood of the fixed point of FO methods, where its radius depends on the bound of the norm of the perturbations, which can be made arbitrarily small. The theoretical findings are illustrated via numerical examples.
Amir Ali Farzin, Philipp Braun, Iman Shames
Apr 27, 2026cs.CC

Primitive Recursion without Composition: Dynamical Characterizations, from Neural Networks to Polynomial ODEs

What do recurrent neural networks, polynomial ODEs, and discrete polynomial maps each bring to computation, and what do they lack? All three operate over the continuum--real-valued states evolved by real-valued dynamics--even when the target functions are discrete. We study them through primitive recursion. We prove that primitive recursion admits equivalent characterizations in all three frameworks: bounded iteration of a fixed recurrent ReLU network, robust computation by a fixed polynomial ODE, and iteration of a fixed polynomial map with an externally supplied step-size parameter. In each, the time bound is itself primitive recursive, composition emerges from the dynamics rather than as a closure rule, and inputs are raw integer vectors. Every primitive recursive function is first compiled into bounded iteration of a single threshold-affine normal form, then interpreted as a ReLU computation and as a polynomial ODE. The equivalences expose a structural asymmetry: no fixed polynomial map can round uniformly to the nearest integer or realize exact phase selection--operations polynomial ODEs perform robustly via continuous-time flow. Each formalism compensates for a limitation the others lack: the ReLU gate provides exact branching, continuous time provides autonomous rounding and control, and the step-size parameter recovers both at the cost of discretization precision. This opens dynamical characterizations of subrecursive hierarchies and complexity classes by restricting time bounds, polynomial degrees, or discretization resources within one framework. More broadly, these models do not compute by composing subroutines: they shape the trajectory of a dynamical system through clocks, phase selectors, and error correction built into the dynamics. This differs structurally from symbolic programming, and our theorem gives a precise framework to study the difference.
Olivier Bournez
Apr 24, 2026cs.RO

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
Apr 23, 2026cs.RO

Wiggle and Go! System Identification for Zero-Shot Dynamic Rope Manipulation

Many robotic tasks are unforgiving; a single mistake in a dynamic throw can lead to unacceptable delays or unrecoverable failure. We introduce Wiggle and Go!, a two-stage framework for zero-shot rope manipulation: a brief, safe wiggle action is observed to predict descriptive rope parameters, which then conditions a trajectory optimizer for zero-shot goal-conditioned execution. Unlike prior dynamic rope manipulation methods that require large real-world datasets or iterative real-world refinement, our identification module is task-agnostic, supporting diverse manipulation policies without retraining. We achieve a 3.55,cm average accuracy on 3D target striking in real using rope system parameters in comparison to 15.29,cm for uninformed baselines, and over 50% success on multi-objective lobbing and draping tasks. Predicted parameters transfer to unseen motions with 0.95 Pearson correlation between simulated and real rope dynamics, indicating that the identification module generalizes across the task corpus. Project website: https://wiggleandgo.github.io/
Arthur Jakobsson, Abhinav Mahajan, Karthik Pullalarevu +6
Apr 23, 2026stat.ML

CLT-Optimal Parameter Error Bounds for Linear System Identification

There has been remarkable progress over the past decade in establishing finite-sample, non-asymptotic bounds on recovering unknown system parameters from observed system behavior. Surprisingly, however, we show that the current state-of-the-art bounds do not accurately capture the statistical complexity of system identification, even in the most fundamental setting of estimating a discrete-time linear dynamical system (LDS) via ordinary least-squares regression (OLS). Specifically, we utilize asymptotic normality to identify classes of problem instances for which current bounds overstate the squared parameter error, in both spectral and Frobenius norm, by a factor of the state-dimension of the system. Informed by this discrepancy, we then sharpen the OLS parameter error bounds via a novel second-order decomposition of the parameter error, where crucially the lower-order term is a matrix-valued martingale that we show correctly captures the CLT scaling. From our analysis we obtain finite-sample bounds for both (i) stable systems and (ii) the many-trajectories setting that match the instance-specific optimal rates up to constant factors in Frobenius norm, and polylogarithmic state-dimension factors in spectral norm.
Yichen Zhou, Stephen Tu
Apr 22, 2026cs.LG

Fourier Weak SINDy: Spectral Test Function Selection for Robust Model Identification

We introduce Fourier Weak SINDy, a minimal noise-robust and interpretable derivative-free equation learning method that combines weak-form sparse equation learning with spectral density estimation for data-driven test function selection. By using orthogonal sinusoidal test functions inspired by their prevalence in Modulating Function-based system identification, the weak-form sparse regression problem reduces to a regression over Fourier coefficients. Dominant frequencies are then selected via multitaper estimation of the frequency spectrum of the data. This formulation unifies weak-form learning and spectral estimation within a compact and flexible framework. We illustrate the effectiveness of this approach in numerical experiments across multiple chaotic and hyperchaotic ODE benchmarks.
Zhiheng Chen, Urban Fasel, Anastasia Bizyaeva
Apr 21, 2026physics.flu-dyn

A neural operator framework for data-driven discovery of stability and receptivity in physical systems

Understanding how complex systems respond to perturbations, such as whether they will remain stable or what their most sensitive patterns are, is a fundamental challenge across science and engineering. Traditional stability and receptivity (resolvent) analyses are powerful but rely on known equations and linearization, limiting their use in nonlinear or poorly modeled systems. Here, we introduce a data-driven framework that automatically identifies stability properties and optimal forcing responses from observation data alone, without requiring governing equations. By training a neural network as a dynamics emulator and using automatic differentiation to extract its Jacobian, we can compute eigenmodes and resolvent modes directly from data. We demonstrate the method on both canonical chaotic models and high-dimensional fluid flows, successfully identifying dominant instability modes and input-output structures even in strongly nonlinear regimes. By leveraging a neural network-based emulator, we readily obtain a nonlinear representation of system dynamics while additionally retrieving intricate dynamical patterns that were previously difficult to resolve. This equation-free methodology establishes a broadly applicable tool for analyzing complex, high-dimensional datasets, with immediate relevance to grand challenges in fields such as climate science, neuroscience, and fluid engineering.
Chengyun Wang, Liwei Chen, Nils Thuerey
Apr 20, 2026cs.LG

AC-SINDy: Compositional Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics

We present AC-SINDy, a compositional extension of the Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) framework that replaces explicit feature libraries with a structured representation based on arithmetic circuits. Rather than enumerating candidate basis functions, the proposed approach constructs nonlinear features through compositions of linear functions and multiplicative interactions, yielding a compact and scalable parameterization and enabling sparsity to be enforced directly over the computational graph. We also introduce a formulation that separates state estimation from dynamics identification by combining latent state inference with shared dynamics and multi-step supervision, improving robustness to noise while preserving interpretability. Experiments on nonlinear and chaotic systems demonstrate that the method recovers accurate and interpretable governing equations while scaling more favorably than standard SINDy.
Peter Racioppo
Apr 20, 2026cs.LG

Balance-Guided Sparse Identification of Multiscale Nonlinear PDEs with Small-coefficient Terms

Data-driven discovery of governing equations has advanced significantly in recent years; however, existing methods often struggle in multiscale systems where dynamically significant terms may have small coefficients. Therefore, we propose Balance-Guided SINDy (BG-SINDy) inspired by the principle of dominant balance, which reformulates ℓ0\ell_0-constrained sparse regression as a term-level ℓ2,0\ell_{2,0}-regularized problem and solves it using a progressive pruning strategy. Terms are ranked according to their relative contributions to the governing equation balance rather than their absolute coefficient magnitudes. Based on this criterion, BG-SINDy alternates between least-squares regression and elimination of negligible terms, thereby preserving dynamically significant terms even when their coefficients are small. Numerical experiments on the Korteweg--de Vries equation with a small dispersion coefficient, a modified Burgers equation with vanishing hyperviscosity, a modified Kuramoto--Sivashinsky equation with multiple small-coefficient terms, and a two-dimensional reaction--diffusion system demonstrate the validity of BG-SINDy in discovering small-coefficient terms. The proposed method thus provides an efficient approach for discovering governing equations that contain small-coefficient terms.
Zhenhua Dang, Lei Zhang, Long Wang +1
Apr 20, 2026cs.RO

Locomotion of an Elastic Snake Robot via Natural Dynamics

Nature suggests that exploiting the elasticities and natural dynamics of robotic systems could increase their locomotion efficiency. Prior work on elastic snake robots supports this hypothesis, but has not fully exploited the nonlinear dynamic behavior of the systems. Recent advances in eigenmanifold theory enable a better characterization of the natural dynamics in complex nonlinear systems. This letter investigates if and how the nonlinear natural dynamics of a kinematic elastic snake robot can be used to design efficient gaits. Two types of gaits based on natural dynamics are presented and compared to a state-of-the-art approach using dynamics simulations. The results reveal that a gait generated by switching between two nonlinear normal modes does not improve the locomotion efficiency of the robot. In contrast, gaits based on non-brake periodic trajectories (non-brake orbits) are perfectly efficient in the energy-conservative case. Further simulations with friction reveal that, in a more realistic scenario, non-brake orbit gaits achieve higher efficiency compared to the baseline gait on the rigid system. Overall, the investigation offers promising insights into the design of gaits based on natural dynamics, fostering further research.
Tristan Ehlert, Arne Sachtler, Annika Schmidt +2
Apr 19, 2026eess.SY

Target Parameterization in Diffusion Models for Nonlinear Spatiotemporal System Identification

Machine learning is becoming increasingly important for nonlinear system identification, including dynamical systems with spatially distributed outputs. However, classical identification and forecasting approaches become markedly less reliable in turbulent-flow regimes, where the dynamics are high-dimensional, strongly nonlinear, and highly sensitive to compounding rollout errors. Diffusion-based models have recently shown improved robustness in this setting and offer probabilistic inference capabilities, but many current implementations inherit target parameterizations from image generation, most commonly noise or velocity prediction. In this work, we revisit this design choice in the context of nonlinear spatiotemporal system identification. We consider a simple, self-contained patch-based transformer that operates directly on physical fields and use turbulent flow simulation as a representative testbed. Our results show that clean-state prediction consistently improves rollout stability and reduces long-horizon error relative to velocity- and noise-based objectives, with the advantage becoming more pronounced as the per-token dimensionality increases. These findings identify target parameterization as a key modeling choice in diffusion-based identification of nonlinear systems with spatial outputs in turbulent regimes.
Achraf El Messaoudi, Noureddine Khaous, Karim Cherifi
Apr 19, 2026cs.LG

Machine Learning Hamiltonian Dynamical Systems with Sparse and Noisy Data

Machine learning has become a powerful tool for discovering governing laws of dynamical systems from data. However, most existing approaches degrade severely when observations are sparse, noisy, or irregularly sampled. In this work, we address the problem of learning symbolic representations of nonlinear Hamiltonian dynamical systems under extreme data scarcity by explicitly incorporating physical structure into the learning architecture. We introduce Adaptable Symplectic Recurrent Neural Networks (ASRNNs), a parameter-cognizant, structure-preserving model that combines Hamiltonian learning with symplectic recurrent integration, avoiding time derivative estimation, and enabling stable learning under noise. We demonstrate that ASRNNs can accurately predict long-term dynamics even when each training trajectory consists of only two irregularly spaced time points, possibly corrupted by correlated noise. Leveraging ASRNNs as structure-preserving data generators, we further enable symbolic discovery using independent regression methods (SINDy and PySR), recovering exact symbolic equations for polynomial systems and consistent polynomial approximations for non-polynomial Hamiltonians. Our results show that such architectures can provide a robust pathway to interpretable discovery of Hamiltonian dynamics from sparse and noisy data.
Vedanta Thapar, Abhinav Gupta
Apr 18, 2026cs.LG

Continuous Limits of Coupled Flows in Representation Learning

While modern representation learning relies heavily on global error signals, decentralized algorithms driven by local interactions offer a fundamental distributed alternative. However, the macroscopic convergence properties of these discrete dynamics on continuous data manifolds remain theoretically unresolved, notoriously suffering from parameter explosion. We bridge this gap by formalizing decentralized learning as a coupled slow-fast dynamical system on Riemannian manifolds. First, using measure-theoretic limits, we prove that the discrete spatial transitions converge uniformly to an overdamped Langevin stochastic differential equation. Second, via the Itô-Poisson resolvent and a stochastic extension of LaSalle's Invariance Principle, we establish that the representation weights unconditionally avoid divergence and align strictly with the principal eigenspace of the spatial measure. Finally, we construct a joint Lyapunov functional for the fully coupled spatial-parametric flow. This proves global dissipativity and demonstrates that orthogonally disentangled, linearly separable features emerge spontaneously at the stationary limit. Our framework bridges discrete algorithms with continuous stochastic analysis, providing a formal theoretical baseline for decentralized representation learning.
Zilin Li, Weiwei Xu, Xuchun Tong +2
Apr 18, 2026quant-ph

Q-SINDy: Quantum-Kernel Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics with Provable Coefficient Debiasing

Quantum feature maps offer expressive embeddings for classical learning tasks, and augmenting sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) with such features is a natural but unexplored direction. We introduce \textbf{Q-SINDy}, a quantum-kernel-augmented SINDy framework, and identify a specific failure mode that arises: \emph{coefficient cannibalization}, in which quantum features absorb coefficient mass that rightfully belongs to the polynomial basis, corrupting equation recovery. We derive the exact cannibalization-bias formula ΔξP=(P⊤P)−1P⊤Q ξ^QΔξ_P = (P^\top P)^{-1}P^\top Q\,\hatξ_Q and prove that orthogonalizing quantum features against the polynomial column space at fit time eliminates this bias exactly. The claim is verified numerically to machine precision (<10−12<10^{-12}) on multiple systems. Empirically, across six canonical dynamical systems (Duffing, Van der Pol, Lorenz, Lotka-Volterra, cubic oscillator, Rössler) and three quantum feature map architectures (ZZ-angle encoding, IQP, data re-uploading), orthogonalized Q-SINDy consistently matches vanilla SINDy's structural recovery while uncorrected augmentation degrades true-positive rates by up to 100%. A refined dynamics-aware diagnostic, RQ2R^2_Q for X˙\dot X, predicts cannibalization severity with statistical significance (Pearson r=0.70r=0.70, p=0.023p=0.023). An RBF classical-kernel control across 20 hyperparameter configurations fails more severely than any quantum variant, ruling out feature count as the cause. Orthogonalization remains robust under depolarizing hardware noise up to 2% per gate, and the framework extends without modification to Burgers' equation.
Samrendra Roy, Syed Bahauddin Alam
Apr 16, 2026cs.LG

One-shot learning for the complex dynamical behaviors of weakly nonlinear forced oscillators

Extrapolative prediction of complex nonlinear dynamics remains a central challenge in engineering. This study proposes a one-shot learning method to identify global frequency-response curves from a single excitation time history by learning governing equations. We introduce MEv-SINDy (Multi-frequency Evolutionary Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics) to infer the governing equations of non-autonomous and multi-frequency systems. The methodology leverages the Generalized Harmonic Balance (GHB) method to decompose complex forced responses into a set of slow-varying evolution equations. We validated the capabilities of MEv-SINDy on two critical Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). These applications include a nonlinear beam resonator and a MEMS micromirror. Our results show that the model trained on a single point accurately predicts softening/hardening effects and jump phenomena across a wide range of excitation levels. This approach significantly reduces the data acquisition burden for the characterization and design of nonlinear microsystems.
Teng Ma, Luca Rosafalco, Wei Cui +2
Apr 16, 2026cs.LG

xFODE: An Explainable Fuzzy Additive ODE Framework for System Identification

Recent advances in Deep Learning (DL) have strengthened data-driven System Identification (SysID), with Neural and Fuzzy Ordinary Differential Equation (NODE/FODE) models achieving high accuracy in nonlinear dynamic modeling. Yet, system states in these frameworks are often reconstructed without clear physical meaning, and input contributions to the state derivatives remain difficult to interpret. To address these limitations, we propose Explainable FODE (xFODE), an interpretable SysID framework with integrated DL-based training. In xFODE, we define states in an incremental form to provide them with physical meanings. We employ fuzzy additive models to approximate the state derivative, thereby enhancing interpretability per input. To provide further interpretability, Partitioning Strategies (PSs) are developed, enabling the training of fuzzy additive models with explainability. By structuring the antecedent space during training so that only two consecutive rules are activated for any given input, PSs not only yield lower complexity for local inference but also enhance the interpretability of the antecedent space. To train xFODE, we present a DL framework with parameterized membership function learning that supports end-to-end optimization. Across benchmark SysID datasets, xFODE matches the accuracy of NODE, FODE, and NLARX models while providing interpretable insights.
Ertugrul Kececi, Tufan Kumbasar
Apr 16, 2026cs.LG

xFODE+: Explainable Type-2 Fuzzy Additive ODEs for Uncertainty Quantification

Recent advances in Deep Learning (DL) have boosted data-driven System Identification (SysID), but reliable use requires Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) alongside accurate predictions. Although UQ-capable models such as Fuzzy ODE (FODE) can produce Prediction Intervals (PIs), they offer limited interpretability. We introduce Explainable Type-2 Fuzzy Additive ODEs for UQ (xFODE+), an interpretable SysID model which produces PIs alongside point predictions while retaining physically meaningful incremental states. xFODE+ implements each fuzzy additive model with Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Systems (IT2-FLSs) and constraints membership functions to the activation of two neighboring rules, limiting overlap and keeping inference locally transparent. The type-reduced sets produced by the IT2-FLSs are aggregated to construct the state update together with the PIs. The model is trained in a DL framework via a composite loss that jointly optimizes prediction accuracy and PI quality. Results on benchmark SysID datasets show that xFODE+ matches FODE in PI quality and achieves comparable accuracy, while providing interpretability.
Ertugrul Kececi, Tufan Kumbasar