arXiv Machine Learning

Distribution Steering via Sliced Optimal Transport Control

arXiv:2608. 12828v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Distribution steering seeks feedback laws that drive the state law of a dynamical system between prescribed initial and terminal distributions.

arXiv AI
2d ago

Distributionally Robust Schr\"odinger Bridge

The paper introduces the Distributionally Robust Schr"odinger Bridge (DRSB), a method that learns a single controller capable of handling uncertainty in the initial distribution for stochastic transport tasks. DRSB’s objective combines control energy with a KL penalty on the terminal distribution, and it seeks to minimize the worst‑case value of this objective over an ambiguity set around the nominal initial distribution. The authors derive a variational formulation, connect it to stochastic optimal control and distributionally robust optimization, and propose an alternating algorithm with Wasserstein and Sinkhorn variants. Experiments on two‑dimensional transport and image‑to‑image translation demonstrate improved robustness to input perturbations compared to standard SB, while also achieving lower mean sliced Wasserstein distance on Gaussian mixture transport.

By Jinhwan Sul, Panagiotis Theodoropoulos, Vincent Pacelli, Jaemoo Choi, Evangelos Theodorou
arXiv AI
Sep 3

Schr\"odinger Bridges on Lie Group Manifolds for Probabilistic Intrinsic Generation

The paper introduces a probabilistic generative framework called Schr"odinger Bridges on Lie Group Manifolds, enabling direct modeling of non‑Euclidean data without flattening or coordinate inconsistencies. It develops two computational realizations—Wrapped‑Kernel Bridge Calibration for compact Abelian groups and Reciprocal Conditional‑Control Bridge Matching for compact non‑Abelian groups—while providing a modular error bound that separates various sources of approximation error. Experiments on protein, RNA torsions, SO(3), U(n), and protein conformational pathways demonstrate the method’s feasibility and consistency.

By Shizhe Zhang, Mingyang Zhao, Lei Ma
arXiv Statistics ML
Aug 27

Schr\"odinger Bridges over Kinetic Swarming Models

The paper studies finite‑horizon minimum‑energy steering of inertial swarms under stochastic disturbances, focusing on mean‑field models with Cucker–Smale alignment or Morse attraction–repulsion interactions. It formulates the problem as a Schr"odinger bridge, deriving nonlinear, time‑symmetric optimality systems and proposing nested fixed‑point schemes for numerical solution. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the optimal corrective drift can either exploit or counteract the natural interaction forces, depending on their alignment with the steering objective.

By Asmaa Eldesoukey, Md Zulfiqur Haider, Italo Napolitano, Yongxin Chen, Abhishek Halder
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 29

PAC-Bayesian Certificates for Quadratic Closed-Loop Control

arXiv:2606. 28281v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: PAC-Bayesian bounds provide finite-sample guarantees for data-dependent randomized predictors, but applying them to learning-based control is difficult because the natural objective is a quadratic trajectory cost.

By Domagoj Herceg
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 26

Finite-Sample Metric Non-Collapse for Geometrically Supervised Latent World Models in Control

The paper presents a finite‑sample learning‑to‑control framework for geometrically supervised latent models of nonlinear deterministic systems. It introduces an encoder‑only local–global metric hinge that ensures directional resolution and state discrimination, and proves that any approximate empirical minimizer is pointwise co‑Lipschitz and uniformly approximately semiconjugate to the true dynamics under regularity assumptions. The results provide explicit bounds on approximation, sampling, and optimization errors, and demonstrate through controlled experiments that restoring metric resolution improves control performance.

By Alain Bensoussan, Minh-Nhat Phung, Minh-Binh Tran
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 23

Penalized Nonreversible Langevin for Constrained Sampling

The paper introduces penalized nonreversible Langevin algorithms for sampling from a target distribution constrained to a compact convex set. It combines a squared distance penalty with skew-symmetric perturbations that preserve the penalized Gibbs distribution, and provides nonasymptotic total variation and Wasserstein bounds under various smoothness and contraction assumptions. Numerical experiments demonstrate the methods on constrained Bayesian regression, classification, neural networks, and truncated sampling, highlighting acceleration in a stochastic quadratic model.

By Pervez Ali, Weihao Dong, Xiaoyu Wang