Control-Oriented System Identification: Classical, Learning, and Physics-Informed Approaches

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Main Authors: Sivaranjani, S., Shi, Yuanyuan, Atanasov, Nikolay, Duong, Thai, Feng, Jie, Martin, Tim, Xu, Yuezhu, Gupta, Vijay, Allgöwer, Frank
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sivaranjani, S.
Shi, Yuanyuan
Atanasov, Nikolay
Duong, Thai
Feng, Jie
Martin, Tim
Xu, Yuezhu
Gupta, Vijay
Allgöwer, Frank
author_facet Sivaranjani, S.
Shi, Yuanyuan
Atanasov, Nikolay
Duong, Thai
Feng, Jie
Martin, Tim
Xu, Yuezhu
Gupta, Vijay
Allgöwer, Frank
contents We survey classical, machine learning, and data-driven system identification approaches to learn control-relevant and physics-informed models of dynamical systems. Recently, machine learning approaches have enabled system identification from noisy, high-dimensional, and complex data. However, their utility is limited by their ability to provide provable guarantees on control-relevant properties. Meanwhile, control theory has identified several properties that are useful in analysis and control synthesis, such as dissipativity, monotonicity, energy conservation, and symmetry-preserving structures. We posit that merging system identification with such control-relevant or physics-informed properties can provide useful inductive bias, enhance explainability, enable control synthesis with provable guarantees, and improve sample complexity. We formulate system identification as an optimization problem where control-relevant properties can be enforced through direct parameterization (constraining the model structure to satisfy a desired property by construction), soft constraints (encouraging control-relevant properties through regularization or penalty terms), and hard constraints (imposing control-relevant properties as constraints in the optimization problem). Through this lens, we survey methods to learn physics-informed and control-relevant models spanning classical linear and nonlinear system identification, machine learning approaches, and direct identification through data-driven and behavioral representations. We also provide several expository examples that are accompanied by code and brief tutorials on a public Github repository. We also describe challenging directions for future research, including identification in networked, switched, and time-varying systems, experiment design, and bridging the gaps between data-driven, learning-based, and control-oriented approaches.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_06315
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Control-Oriented System Identification: Classical, Learning, and Physics-Informed Approaches
Sivaranjani, S.
Shi, Yuanyuan
Atanasov, Nikolay
Duong, Thai
Feng, Jie
Martin, Tim
Xu, Yuezhu
Gupta, Vijay
Allgöwer, Frank
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
We survey classical, machine learning, and data-driven system identification approaches to learn control-relevant and physics-informed models of dynamical systems. Recently, machine learning approaches have enabled system identification from noisy, high-dimensional, and complex data. However, their utility is limited by their ability to provide provable guarantees on control-relevant properties. Meanwhile, control theory has identified several properties that are useful in analysis and control synthesis, such as dissipativity, monotonicity, energy conservation, and symmetry-preserving structures. We posit that merging system identification with such control-relevant or physics-informed properties can provide useful inductive bias, enhance explainability, enable control synthesis with provable guarantees, and improve sample complexity. We formulate system identification as an optimization problem where control-relevant properties can be enforced through direct parameterization (constraining the model structure to satisfy a desired property by construction), soft constraints (encouraging control-relevant properties through regularization or penalty terms), and hard constraints (imposing control-relevant properties as constraints in the optimization problem). Through this lens, we survey methods to learn physics-informed and control-relevant models spanning classical linear and nonlinear system identification, machine learning approaches, and direct identification through data-driven and behavioral representations. We also provide several expository examples that are accompanied by code and brief tutorials on a public Github repository. We also describe challenging directions for future research, including identification in networked, switched, and time-varying systems, experiment design, and bridging the gaps between data-driven, learning-based, and control-oriented approaches.
title Control-Oriented System Identification: Classical, Learning, and Physics-Informed Approaches
topic Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06315