Discovering and exploiting active sensing motifs for estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Cellini, Benjamin, Boyacioglu, Burak, Lopez, Austin, van Breugel, Floris
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Cellini, Benjamin
Boyacioglu, Burak
Lopez, Austin
van Breugel, Floris
author_facet Cellini, Benjamin
Boyacioglu, Burak
Lopez, Austin
van Breugel, Floris
contents From organisms to machines, autonomous systems rely on measured sensory cues to estimate unknown information about themselves or their environment. For nonlinear systems, strategic sensor motion can be leveraged to extract otherwise inaccessible information. This principle, known as active sensing, is widespread in biology yet difficult to study, and remains underutilized in engineered systems due to the challenge of systematically designing active sensing motifs. Here, we introduce the method ``BOUNDS: Bounding Observability for Uncertain Nonlinear Dynamic Systems", and Python package pybounds, which can discover movement motifs that increase the information encoded in sensory cues. To exploit sporadic estimates from bouts of active sensing, we further introduce the Augmented Information Kalman Filter (AI-KF). The AI-KF uses insight from BOUNDS to dynamically fuse neural network and model-based estimation. We demonstrate BOUNDS and the AI-KF on a flying agent model and experimental GPS-denied data from a quadcopter, revealing how specific active movements improve estimates of ground speed, altitude, and wind direction. Altogether, our work will prove useful for designing sensor-minimal autonomous systems and investigating active sensing in living organisms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_08766
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovering and exploiting active sensing motifs for estimation
Cellini, Benjamin
Boyacioglu, Burak
Lopez, Austin
van Breugel, Floris
Systems and Control
Dynamical Systems
From organisms to machines, autonomous systems rely on measured sensory cues to estimate unknown information about themselves or their environment. For nonlinear systems, strategic sensor motion can be leveraged to extract otherwise inaccessible information. This principle, known as active sensing, is widespread in biology yet difficult to study, and remains underutilized in engineered systems due to the challenge of systematically designing active sensing motifs. Here, we introduce the method ``BOUNDS: Bounding Observability for Uncertain Nonlinear Dynamic Systems", and Python package pybounds, which can discover movement motifs that increase the information encoded in sensory cues. To exploit sporadic estimates from bouts of active sensing, we further introduce the Augmented Information Kalman Filter (AI-KF). The AI-KF uses insight from BOUNDS to dynamically fuse neural network and model-based estimation. We demonstrate BOUNDS and the AI-KF on a flying agent model and experimental GPS-denied data from a quadcopter, revealing how specific active movements improve estimates of ground speed, altitude, and wind direction. Altogether, our work will prove useful for designing sensor-minimal autonomous systems and investigating active sensing in living organisms.
title Discovering and exploiting active sensing motifs for estimation
topic Systems and Control
Dynamical Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08766