A Constraint Generation Approach to Learning Stable Linear Dynamical Systems

Abstract

Stability is a desirable characteristic for linear dynamical systems, but it is often ignored by algorithms that learn these systems from data. We propose a novel method for learning stable linear dynamical systems: we formulate an approximation of the problem as a convex program, start with a solution to a relaxed version of the program, and incrementally add constraints to improve stability. Rather than continuing to generate constraints until we reach a feasible solution, we test stability at each step; because the convex program is only an approximation of the desired problem, this early stopping rule can yield a higher-quality solution. We apply our algorithm to the task of learning dynamic textures from image sequences as well as to modeling biosurveillance drug-sales data. The constraint generation approach leads to noticeable improvement in the quality of simulated sequences. We compare our method to those of Lacy and Bernstein [1, 2], with positive results in terms of accuracy, quality of simulated sequences, and efficiency.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA481034

Entities

People

  • Byron Boots
  • Geoffrey J. Gordon
  • Sajid M. Siddiqi

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Bayesian Networks
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Dynamics
  • Eigenvalues
  • Errors
  • Identification
  • Instability
  • Learning
  • Machine Learning
  • Models
  • Social Sciences

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Neural Network Machine Learning.
  • Operations Research

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology