Quantifying Aleatoric and Epistemic Dynamics Uncertainty via Local Conformal Calibration

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Main Authors: Marques, Luís, Berenson, Dmitry
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Marques, Luís
Berenson, Dmitry
author_facet Marques, Luís
Berenson, Dmitry
contents Whether learned, simulated, or analytical, approximations of a robot's dynamics can be inaccurate when encountering novel environments. Many approaches have been proposed to quantify the aleatoric uncertainty of such methods, i.e. uncertainty resulting from stochasticity, however these estimates alone are not enough to properly estimate the uncertainty of a model in a novel environment, where the actual dynamics can change. Such changes can induce epistemic uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty due to a lack of information/data. Accounting for both epistemic and aleatoric dynamics uncertainty in a theoretically-grounded way remains an open problem. We introduce Local Uncertainty Conformal Calibration (LUCCa), a conformal prediction-based approach that calibrates the aleatoric uncertainty estimates provided by dynamics models to generate probabilistically-valid prediction regions of the system's state. We account for both epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty non-asymptotically, without strong assumptions about the form of the true dynamics or how it changes. The calibration is performed locally in the state-action space, leading to uncertainty estimates that are useful for planning. We validate our method by constructing probabilistically-safe plans for a double-integrator under significant changes in dynamics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_08249
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantifying Aleatoric and Epistemic Dynamics Uncertainty via Local Conformal Calibration
Marques, Luís
Berenson, Dmitry
Robotics
Systems and Control
Whether learned, simulated, or analytical, approximations of a robot's dynamics can be inaccurate when encountering novel environments. Many approaches have been proposed to quantify the aleatoric uncertainty of such methods, i.e. uncertainty resulting from stochasticity, however these estimates alone are not enough to properly estimate the uncertainty of a model in a novel environment, where the actual dynamics can change. Such changes can induce epistemic uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty due to a lack of information/data. Accounting for both epistemic and aleatoric dynamics uncertainty in a theoretically-grounded way remains an open problem. We introduce Local Uncertainty Conformal Calibration (LUCCa), a conformal prediction-based approach that calibrates the aleatoric uncertainty estimates provided by dynamics models to generate probabilistically-valid prediction regions of the system's state. We account for both epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty non-asymptotically, without strong assumptions about the form of the true dynamics or how it changes. The calibration is performed locally in the state-action space, leading to uncertainty estimates that are useful for planning. We validate our method by constructing probabilistically-safe plans for a double-integrator under significant changes in dynamics.
title Quantifying Aleatoric and Epistemic Dynamics Uncertainty via Local Conformal Calibration
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08249