Consistent inverse optimal control for infinite time-horizon discounted nonlinear systems under noisy observations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Ziliang, Ringh, Axel, Zhang, Han
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wang, Ziliang
Ringh, Axel
Zhang, Han
author_facet Wang, Ziliang
Ringh, Axel
Zhang, Han
contents Inverse optimal control (IOC) aims to estimate the underlying cost that governs the observed behavior of an expert system. However, in practical scenarios, the collected data is often corrupted by noise, which poses significant challenges for accurate cost function recovery. In this work, we propose an IOC framework that effectively addresses the presence of observation noise. In particular, compared to our previous work \cite{wang2025consistent}, we consider the case of discrete-time, infinite-horizon, discounted MDPs whose transition kernel is only weak Feller. By leveraging the occupation measure framework, we first establish the necessary and sufficient optimality conditions for the expert policy and then construct an infinite dimensional optimization problem based on these conditions. This problem is then approximated by polynomials to get a finite-dimensional numerically solvable one, which relies on the moments of the state-action trajectory's occupation measure. More specifically, the moments are robustly estimated from the noisy observations by a combined misspecified Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator derived from observation model and system dynamics. Consequently, the entire algorithm is based on convex optimization which alleviates the issues that arise from local minima and is asymptotically and statistically consistent. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is illustrated through numerical examples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_07874
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Consistent inverse optimal control for infinite time-horizon discounted nonlinear systems under noisy observations
Wang, Ziliang
Ringh, Axel
Zhang, Han
Optimization and Control
Inverse optimal control (IOC) aims to estimate the underlying cost that governs the observed behavior of an expert system. However, in practical scenarios, the collected data is often corrupted by noise, which poses significant challenges for accurate cost function recovery. In this work, we propose an IOC framework that effectively addresses the presence of observation noise. In particular, compared to our previous work \cite{wang2025consistent}, we consider the case of discrete-time, infinite-horizon, discounted MDPs whose transition kernel is only weak Feller. By leveraging the occupation measure framework, we first establish the necessary and sufficient optimality conditions for the expert policy and then construct an infinite dimensional optimization problem based on these conditions. This problem is then approximated by polynomials to get a finite-dimensional numerically solvable one, which relies on the moments of the state-action trajectory's occupation measure. More specifically, the moments are robustly estimated from the noisy observations by a combined misspecified Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator derived from observation model and system dynamics. Consequently, the entire algorithm is based on convex optimization which alleviates the issues that arise from local minima and is asymptotically and statistically consistent. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is illustrated through numerical examples.
title Consistent inverse optimal control for infinite time-horizon discounted nonlinear systems under noisy observations
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07874