Fast and Sample Efficient Safety Verification via Extreme Learning Machine

Abstract

Deep learning methods like neural networks have greatly simplified the computation of safety certificates for complex nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics. However, due to the data-driven nature of these certificates and the complex architecture of neural networks, computation time as well as robustness guarantees across unseen data remain a challenge. This work aims to formally verify safety properties of discrete-time unknown systems by synthesizing extreme learning machine (ELM)-based barrier certificates. Compared to neural network counterparts, this approach greatly improves convergence guarantees and computational time due to its architectural simplicity and the convex nature of the underlying optimization problem. By minimizing the Lipschitz constant of the candidate barrier, we present a grid-based sampling technique to formally verify its validity using the minimum number of samples required. We demonstrate through numerical examples the effectiveness of our approach, and compare with traditional deep-learning based certificate synthesis to highlight its benefits.