Logarithmic Regret for Nonlinear Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wang, James, Lee, Bruce D., Ziemann, Ingvar, Matni, Nikolai
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Wang, James
Lee, Bruce D.
Ziemann, Ingvar
Matni, Nikolai
author_facet Wang, James
Lee, Bruce D.
Ziemann, Ingvar
Matni, Nikolai
contents We address the problem of learning to control an unknown nonlinear dynamical system through sequential interactions. Motivated by high-stakes applications in which mistakes can be catastrophic, such as robotics and healthcare, we study situations where it is possible for fast sequential learning to occur. Fast sequential learning is characterized by the ability of the learning agent to incur logarithmic regret relative to a fully-informed baseline. We demonstrate that fast sequential learning is achievable in a diverse class of continuous control problems where the system dynamics depend smoothly on unknown parameters, provided the optimal control policy is persistently exciting. Additionally, we derive a regret bound which grows with the square root of the number of interactions for cases where the optimal policy is not persistently exciting. Our results provide the first regret bounds for controlling nonlinear dynamical systems depending nonlinearly on unknown parameters. We validate the trends our theory predicts in simulation on a simple dynamical system.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_10261
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Logarithmic Regret for Nonlinear Control
Wang, James
Lee, Bruce D.
Ziemann, Ingvar
Matni, Nikolai
Machine Learning
We address the problem of learning to control an unknown nonlinear dynamical system through sequential interactions. Motivated by high-stakes applications in which mistakes can be catastrophic, such as robotics and healthcare, we study situations where it is possible for fast sequential learning to occur. Fast sequential learning is characterized by the ability of the learning agent to incur logarithmic regret relative to a fully-informed baseline. We demonstrate that fast sequential learning is achievable in a diverse class of continuous control problems where the system dynamics depend smoothly on unknown parameters, provided the optimal control policy is persistently exciting. Additionally, we derive a regret bound which grows with the square root of the number of interactions for cases where the optimal policy is not persistently exciting. Our results provide the first regret bounds for controlling nonlinear dynamical systems depending nonlinearly on unknown parameters. We validate the trends our theory predicts in simulation on a simple dynamical system.
title Logarithmic Regret for Nonlinear Control
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10261