Papers for

control engineers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Fast extraction of control constraints for uncertain system logic rules

Fast Constraint Extraction for Corrective Control under STL Specifications via Logical Dependency Tracking

Abstract: Ensuring the satisfaction of Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications under uncertainty is challenging, as reachability-based monitoring provides guarantees but does not indicate how to restore satisfaction when it becomes indeterminate. A key difficulty is identifying which uncertain components actually affect global satisfaction, especially for nested formulas. This paper introduces a logical dependency tracking framework that propagates uncertainty through the STL structure and captures the causal contribution of reachable sets to satisfaction. By associating markers to uncertain predicates and propagating them via three-valued semantics, we extract in milliseconds a compact Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) of sufficient constraints, avoiding combinatorial enumeration. As an application, we formulate control correction as a minimum-effort optimization problem. Using zonotopic reachability, the derived constraints are enforced via linear programming, yielding corrections that guarantee STL satisfaction under bounded uncertainty and provide certified probabilistic bounds in the stochastic case. We demonstrate the approach on a nonlinear system with nested STL specifications, showing that dependency tracking enables efficient and formally guaranteed correction. The tracking implementation is available at https://github.com/Antoine-Bst/STL-Three-Valued-Clause-Filtering/.

Tue 8 SeptLogic in Computer ScienceRobotics
The gist
Controlling systems to reliably meet complex timing and logical rules is hard when there’s uncertainty. The authors developed a fast way to figure out which parts of the system’s uncertain inputs actually cause problems in following these rules. They use a technique that tracks how uncertainty flows through the logic, enabling quick identification of conditions that must be met. This lets them efficiently adjust controls to correct the system behavior with strong guarantees that the rules will be satisfied.
Open 2609.09439v1

PAC Bayesian error bounds improve learning of noisy linear dynamical systems

PAC-Bayesian Bounds for Learning Partially Observed Stochastic Linear Time-Invariant State-Space Systems with Inputs and Sub-Gaussian Noise

Abstract: In this paper we derive a Probably Approximately Correct (PAC)-Bayesian error bound for partially observed linear time-invariant (LTI) stochastic dynamical systems in state-space form with inputs and sub-Gaussian noise. Such bounds are widespread in machine learning, and they are useful for characterizing the predictive power of models learned from finitely many data points. The bound derived in this paper relates the expectation of prediction errors with the prediction error generated by the model on the data used for learning. In addition, we show that it can also be used to derive bounds for the parameter estimation error. In turn, this allows us to provide finite-sample error bounds for the prediction error and parameter estimation error for a wide class of system identification algorithms. Furthermore, as LTI systems are a sub-class of recurrent neural networks (RNNs), these error bounds could be a first step towards PAC-Bayesian bounds for RNNs.

Tue 8 SeptMachine Learning
The gist
Predicting how systems change over time can be hard when you can only see part of the system and measurements have noise. The authors derived a way to estimate how accurate predictions will be after learning from limited noisy data. Their approach links the average error on new data to the error on the data used for learning, helping to understand and limit mistakes. This also helps measure how well the underlying system parameters are learned. Since linear time-invariant systems are a simple kind of recurrent neural network, this work could help develop error bounds for more complex models too.
Open 2609.08740v1

Actionable certificates enable flexible winning strategies in uncertain games

Towards Actionable Strategy Certificates in Stochastic Parity Games

Abstract: We propose a new approach for synthesizing large sets of winning strategies in stochastic parity games (2.5-player games) with quantitative objectives. Instead of computing a single, fully specified winning strategy, we introduce Actionable Strategy Certificates (ASCerts) as a local and permissive representation of a large class of system player winning strategies. To this end, we extend known certificates for stochastic invariants to the setting of games. Our certificates prove that synthesized strategies remain within a safe region of the game with probability at least $λ\in [0,1]$. As such, the certificates enhance the trustworthiness of synthesized strategies. The crux of our approach is to reinterpret and leverage the certificates as concise, local, and permissive representation of (possibly infinitely many) strategies. By carefully combining our certificates for stochastic invariants with strategy templates for almost-sure winning, we obtain a novel local representation of quantitatively winning strategies in stochastic parity games. This enables efficient synthesis, adaptation, and runtime strategy extraction, making ASCerts well suited for logical control in uncertain and adversarial environments. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation and demonstrate the potential of applying ASCerts in runtime adaptation on a case study.

Tue 8 SeptComputer Science and Game Theory
The gist
Winning in complex games with chance and decisions can be tough to guarantee. The authors create a new way to represent many possible winning strategies using small, clear certificates that prove safety with high probability. This approach allows easier strategy creation, adjustment, and use even during play in uncertain and competitive settings. They show how this method works on a real example and provide a basic software tool for it.
Open 2609.08529v1