We study the problem of computing robust controllable sets for discrete-time linear systems with additive uncertainty. We propose a tractable and scalable approach to inner- and outer-approximate robust controllable sets using constrained zonotopes, when the additive uncertainty set is a symmetric, convex, and compact set. Our least-squares-based approach uses novel closed-form approximations of the Pontryagin difference between a constrained zonotopic minuend and a symmetric, convex, and compact subtrahend. Unlike existing approaches, our approach does not rely on convex optimization solvers, and is projection-free for ellipsoidal and zonotopic uncertainty sets. We also propose a least-squares-based approach to compute a convex, polyhedral outer-approximation to constrained zonotopes, and characterize sufficient conditions under which all these approximations are exact. We demonstrate the computational efficiency and scalability of our approach in several case studies, including the design of abort-safe rendezvous trajectories for a spacecraft in near-rectilinear halo orbit under uncertainty. Our approach can inner-approximate a 20-step robust controllable set for a 100-dimensional linear system in under 15 seconds on a standard computer.
We consider the problem of finite-time identification of linear dynamical systems from $T$ samples of a single trajectory. Recent results have predominantly focused on the setup where no structural assumption is made on the system matrix $A^* \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n}$, and have consequently analyzed the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator in detail. We assume prior structural information on $A^*$ is available, which can be captured in the form of a convex set $\mathcal{K}$ containing $A^*$. For the solution of the ensuing constrained least squares estimator, we derive non-asymptotic error bounds in the Frobenius norm that depend on the local size of $\mathcal{K}$ at $A^*$. To illustrate the usefulness of these results, we instantiate them for four examples, namely when (i) $A^*$ is sparse and $\mathcal{K}$ is a suitably scaled $\ell_1$ ball; (ii) $\mathcal{K}$ is a subspace; (iii) $\mathcal{K}$ consists of matrices each of which is formed by sampling a bivariate convex function on a uniform $n \times n$ grid (convex regression); (iv) $\mathcal{K}$ consists of matrices each row of which is formed by uniform sampling (with step size $1/T$) of a univariate Lipschitz function. In all these situations, we show that $A^*$ can be reliably estimated for values of $T$ much smaller than what is needed for the unconstrained setting.
We study the potential of noisy labels y to pretrain semantic segmentation models in a multi-modal learning framework for geospatial applications. Specifically, we propose a novel Cross-modal Sample Selection method (CromSS) that utilizes the class distributions P^{(d)}(x,c) over pixels x and classes c modelled by multiple sensors/modalities d of a given geospatial scene. Consistency of predictions across sensors $d$ is jointly informed by the entropy of P^{(d)}(x,c). Noisy label sampling we determine by the confidence of each sensor d in the noisy class label, P^{(d)}(x,c=y(x)). To verify the performance of our approach, we conduct experiments with Sentinel-1 (radar) and Sentinel-2 (optical) satellite imagery from the globally-sampled SSL4EO-S12 dataset. We pair those scenes with 9-class noisy labels sourced from the Google Dynamic World project for pretraining. Transfer learning evaluations (downstream task) on the DFC2020 dataset confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method for remote sensing image segmentation.
We present MULTIGAIN 2.0, a major extension to the controller synthesis tool MULTIGAIN, built on top of the probabilistic model checker PRISM. This new version extends MULTIGAIN's multi-objective capabilities, by allowing for the formal verification and synthesis of controllers for probabilistic systems with multi-dimensional long-run average reward structures, steady-state constraints, and linear temporal logic properties. Additionally, MULTIGAIN 2.0 can modify the underlying linear program to prevent unbounded-memory and other unintuitive solutions and visualizes Pareto curves, in the two- and three-dimensional cases, to facilitate trade-off analysis in multi-objective scenarios.
Linkage methods are among the most popular algorithms for hierarchical clustering. Despite their relevance the current knowledge regarding the quality of the clustering produced by these methods is limited. Here, we improve the currently available bounds on the maximum diameter of the clustering obtained by complete-link for metric spaces. One of our new bounds, in contrast to the existing ones, allows us to separate complete-link from single-link in terms of approximation for the diameter, which corroborates the common perception that the former is more suitable than the latter when the goal is producing compact clusters. We also show that our techniques can be employed to derive upper bounds on the cohesion of a class of linkage methods that includes the quite popular average-link.
We present a novel approach for modeling bounded count time series data, by deriving accurate upper and lower bounds for the variance of a bounded count random variable while maintaining a fixed mean. Leveraging these bounds, we propose semiparametric mean and variance joint (MVJ) models utilizing a clipped-Laplace link function. These models offer a flexible and feasible structure for both mean and variance, accommodating various scenarios of under-dispersion, equi-dispersion, or over-dispersion in bounded time series. The proposed MVJ models feature a linear mean structure with positive regression coefficients summing to one and allow for negative regression cefficients and autocorrelations. We demonstrate that the autocorrelation structure of MVJ models mirrors that of an autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) process, provided the proposed clipped-Laplace link functions with nonnegative regression coefficients summing to one are utilized. We establish conditions ensuring the stationarity and ergodicity properties of the MVJ process, along with demonstrating the consistency and asymptotic normality of the conditional least squares estimators. To aid model selection and diagnostics, we introduce two model selection criteria and apply two model diagnostics statistics. Finally, we conduct simulations and real data analyses to investigate the finite-sample properties of the proposed MVJ models, providing insights into their efficacy and applicability in practical scenarios.
We study the canonical variables based numerical schemes of a hybrid model with kinetic ions and mass-less electrons. Two equivalent formulations of the hybrid model are presented with the vector potentials in different gauges and the distribution functions depending on canonical momentum (not velocity), which constitutes a pair of canonical variables with the position variable. Particle-in-cell methods are used for the distribution functions, and the vector potentials are discretized by the finite element methods in the framework of finite element exterior calculus. Splitting methods are used for the time discretizations. It is illustrated that the second formulation is numerically superior and the schemes constructed based on the anti-symmetric bracket proposed have better conservation properties and lower noise, although the filters can be used to improve the schemes of the first formulation.
Linear structural vector autoregressive models can be identified statistically without imposing restrictions on the model if the shocks are mutually independent and at most one of them is Gaussian. We show that this result extends to structural threshold and smooth transition vector autoregressive models incorporating a time-varying impact matrix defined as a weighted sum of the impact matrices of the regimes. Our empirical application studies the effects of the climate policy uncertainty shock on the U.S. macroeconomy. In a structural logistic smooth transition vector autoregressive model consisting of two regimes, we find that a positive climate policy uncertainty shock decreases production in times of low economic policy uncertainty but slightly increases it in times of high economic policy uncertainty. The introduced methods are implemented to the accompanying R package sstvars.
We present the first formulation of the optimal polynomial approximation of the solution of linear non-autonomous systems of ODEs in the framework of the so-called $\star$-product. This product is the basis of new approaches for the solution of such ODEs, both in the analytical and the numerical sense. The paper shows how to formally state the problem and derives upper bounds for its error.
The article introduces a method to learn dynamical systems that are governed by Euler--Lagrange equations from data. The method is based on Gaussian process regression and identifies continuous or discrete Lagrangians and is, therefore, structure preserving by design. A rigorous proof of convergence as the distance between observation data points converges to zero is provided. Next to convergence guarantees, the method allows for quantification of model uncertainty, which can provide a basis of adaptive sampling techniques. We provide efficient uncertainty quantification of any observable that is linear in the Lagrangian, including of Hamiltonian functions (energy) and symplectic structures, which is of interest in the context of system identification. The article overcomes major practical and theoretical difficulties related to the ill-posedness of the identification task of (discrete) Lagrangians through a careful design of geometric regularisation strategies and through an exploit of a relation to convex minimisation problems in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces.
Realizing computationally complex quantum circuits in the presence of noise and imperfections is a challenging task. While fault-tolerant quantum computing provides a route to reducing noise, it requires a large overhead for generic algorithms. Here, we develop and analyze a hardware-efficient, fault-tolerant approach to realizing complex sampling circuits. We co-design the circuits with the appropriate quantum error correcting codes for efficient implementation in a reconfigurable neutral atom array architecture, constituting what we call a fault-tolerant compilation of the sampling algorithm. Specifically, we consider a family of $[[2^D , D, 2]]$ quantum error detecting codes whose transversal and permutation gate set can realize arbitrary degree-$D$ instantaneous quantum polynomial (IQP) circuits. Using native operations of the code and the atom array hardware, we compile a fault-tolerant and fast-scrambling family of such IQP circuits in a hypercube geometry, realized recently in the experiments by Bluvstein et al. [Nature 626, 7997 (2024)]. We develop a theory of second-moment properties of degree-$D$ IQP circuits for analyzing hardness and verification of random sampling by mapping to a statistical mechanics model. We provide evidence that sampling from hypercube IQP circuits is classically hard to simulate and analyze the linear cross-entropy benchmark (XEB) in comparison to the average fidelity. To realize a fully scalable approach, we first show that Bell sampling from degree-$4$ IQP circuits is classically intractable and can be efficiently validated. We further devise new families of $[[O(d^D),D,d]]$ color codes of increasing distance $d$, permitting exponential error suppression for transversal IQP sampling. Our results highlight fault-tolerant compiling as a powerful tool in co-designing algorithms with specific error-correcting codes and realistic hardware.