arXiv subjects

Craig Bakker

Publications and source records attributed to Craig Bakker.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Causal identification with $Y_0$

We present the $Y_0$ Python package, which implements causal identification algorithms that apply interventional, counterfactual, and transportability queries to data from (randomized) controlled trials, observational studies, or mixtures thereof. $Y_0$ focuses on the qualitative investigation of causation, helping researchers determine whether a causal relationship can be estimated from available data before attempting to estimate how strong that relationship is. Furthermore, $Y_0$ provides guidance on how to transform the causal query into a symbolic estimand that can be non-parametrically estimated from the available data. $Y_0$ provides a domain-specific language for representing causal queries and estimands as symbolic probabilistic expressions, tools for representing causal graphical models with unobserved confounders, such as acyclic directed mixed graphs (ADMGs), and implementations of numerous identification algorithms from the recent causal inference literature. The $Y_0$ source code can be found under the MIT License at https://github.com/y0-causal-inference/y0 and it can be installed with pip install y0.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Operator-Theoretic Methods for Differential Games

Differential game theory offers an approach for modeling interactions between two or more agents that occur in continuous time. The goal of each agent is to optimize its objective cost functional. In this paper, we present two different methods, based on the Koopman Operator (KO), to solve a zero-sum differential game. The first approach uses the resolvent of the KO to calculate a continuous-time global feedback solution over the entire domain. The second approach uses a discrete-time, data-driven KO representation with control to calculate open-loop control policies one trajectory at a time. We demonstrate these methods on a turret defense game from the literature, and we find that the methods' solutions replicate the behavior of the analytical solution provided in the literature.. Following that demonstration, we highlight the relative advantages and disadvantages of each method and discuss potential future work for this line of research.

math.OC↗

arXiv2025

Time Scale Separation and Hierarchical Control with the Koopman Operator

The Koopman Operator (KO) is a mathematical construct that maps nonlinear (state space) dynamics to corresponding linear dynamics in an infinite-dimensional functional space. For practical applications, finite-dimensional approximations can be constructed with machine learning. The linearity of the KO facilitates the use of linear tools and theories on nonlinear dynamical systems without relying on local approximations. Additionally, the KO has the ability to incorporate forms of domain knowledge such as stability and known variable interactions. It therefore constitutes part of the broader interest in domain-aware or physics-informed machine learning. Hierarchical control and time scale separation are two common properties in engineered systems -- often found together -- that can pose both computational and practical challenges. These properties provide opportunities for further KO-based domain knowledge incorporation, but this has seldom been taken advantage of in the KO literature. This paper focuses on developing and using domain-aware Koopman formulations for systems with hierarchical control, systems with time scale separation, and systems with both. We show how those formulations can be leveraged to quantify the impact of cross-scale interactions on overall stability and to calculate optimal control policies at both fast and slow time scales.

math.DS↗

arXiv2025

Multi-Agent, Multi-Scale Systems with the Koopman Operator

The Koopman Operator (KO) takes nonlinear state dynamics and ``lifts'' those dynamics to an infinite-dimensional functional space of observables in which those dynamics are linear. Computational applications typically use a finite-dimensional approximation to the KO. The KO can also be applied to controlled dynamical systems, and the linearity of the KO then facilitates analysis and control calculations. In principle, the potential benefits provided by the KO, and the way that it facilitates the use of game theory via its linearity, would suggest it as a powerful approach for dealing with multi-agent control problems. In practice, though, there has not been much work in this space: most multi-agent KO work has treated those agents as different components of a single system rather than as distinct decision-making entities. This paper develops a KO formulation for multi-agent systems that structures the interactions between decision-making agents and extends this formulation to systems in which the agents have hierarchical control structures and time scale separated dynamics. We solve the multi-agent control problem in both cases as both a centralized optimization and as a general-sum game theory problem. The comparison of the two sets of optimality conditions defining the control solutions illustrates how coupling between agents can create differences between the social optimum and the Nash equilibrium.

math.DS↗

arXiv2024

Causal Discovery in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems using Koopman Operators

We present a theory of causality in dynamical systems using Koopman operators. Our theory is grounded on a rigorous definition of causal mechanism in dynamical systems given in terms of flow maps. In the Koopman framework, we prove that causal mechanisms manifest as particular flows of observables between function subspaces. While the flow map definition is a clear generalization of the standard definition of causal mechanism given in the structural causal model framework, the flow maps are complicated objects that are not tractable to work with in practice. By contrast, the equivalent Koopman definition lends itself to a straightforward data-driven algorithm that can quantify multivariate causal relations in high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems. The coupled Rossler system provides examples and demonstrations throughout our exposition. We also demonstrate the utility of our data-driven Koopman causality measure by identifying causal flow in the Lorenz 96 system. We show that the causal flow identified by our data-driven algorithm agrees with the information flow identified through a perturbation propagation experiment. Our work provides new theoretical insights into causality for nonlinear dynamical systems, as well as a new toolkit for data-driven causal analysis.

math.DS↗

arXiv2024

How Much Reserve Fuel: Quantifying the Maximal Energy Cost of System Disturbances

Motivated by the design question of additional fuel needed to complete a task in an uncertain environment, this paper introduces metrics to quantify the maximal additional energy used by a control system in the presence of bounded disturbances when compared to a nominal, disturbance-free system. In particular, we consider the task of finite-time stabilization for a linear time-invariant system. We first derive the nominal energy required to achieve this task in a disturbance-free system, and then the worst-case energy over all feasible disturbances. The latter leads to an optimal control problem with a least-squares solution, and then an infinite-dimensional optimization problem where we derive an upper bound on the solution. The comparison of these energies is accomplished using additive and multiplicative metrics, and we derive analytical bounds on these metrics. Simulation examples on an ADMIRE fighter jet model demonstrate the practicability of these metrics, and their variation with the task hardness, a combination of the distance of the initial condition from the origin and the task completion time.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2024

How optimal control of polar sea-ice depends on its tipping points

Several Earth system components are at a high risk of undergoing rapid and irreversible qualitative changes or `tipping', due to increasing climate warming. Potential tipping elements include Arctic sea-ice, Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, and tropical coral reefs. Amidst such immediate concerns, it has become necessary to investigate the feasibility of arresting or even reversing the crossing of tipping thresholds using feedback control. In this paper, we study the control of an idealized diffusive energy balance model (EBM) for the Earth's climate; this model has two tipping points due to strong co-albedo feedback. One of these tipping points is a `small icecap' instability responsible for a rapid transition to an ice-free climate state under increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. We develop an optimal control strategy for the EBM under different climate forcing scenarios with the goal of reversing sea ice loss while minimizing costs. We find that effective control is achievable for such a system, but the cost of reversing sea-ice loss nearly quadruples for an initial state that has just tipped as compared to a state before reaching the tipping point. We also show that thermal inertia may delay tipping leading to an overshoot of the critical GHG forcing threshold. This may offer a short intervention window (overshoot window) during which the control required to reverse sea-ice loss only scales linearly with intervention time. While systems with larger system inertia may have longer overshoot windows, this increased elbow room comes with a steeper rise in the requisite control once the intervention is delayed past this window. Additionally, we find that the requisite control to restore sea-ice is localized in the polar region.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2022

Koopman-based Differentiable Predictive Control for the Dynamics-Aware Economic Dispatch Problem

The dynamics-aware economic dispatch (DED) problem embeds low-level generator dynamics and operational constraints to enable near real-time scheduling of generation units in a power network. DED produces a more dynamic supervisory control policy than traditional economic dispatch (T-ED) that leads to reduced overall generation costs. However, the incorporation of differential equations that govern the system dynamics makes DED an optimization problem that is computationally prohibitive to solve. In this work, we present a new data-driven approach based on differentiable programming to efficiently obtain parametric solutions to the underlying DED problem. In particular, we employ the recently proposed differentiable predictive control (DPC) for offline learning of explicit neural control policies using an identified Koopman operator (KO) model of the power system dynamics. We demonstrate the high solution quality and five orders of magnitude computational-time savings of the DPC method over the original online optimization-based DED approach on a 9-bus test power grid network.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2021

Leveraging Structured Biological Knowledge for Counterfactual Inference: a Case Study of Viral Pathogenesis

Counterfactual inference is a useful tool for comparing outcomes of interventions on complex systems. It requires us to represent the system in form of a structural causal model, complete with a causal diagram, probabilistic assumptions on exogenous variables, and functional assignments. Specifying such models can be extremely difficult in practice. The process requires substantial domain expertise, and does not scale easily to large systems, multiple systems, or novel system modifications. At the same time, many application domains, such as molecular biology, are rich in structured causal knowledge that is qualitative in nature. This manuscript proposes a general approach for querying a causal biological knowledge graph, and converting the qualitative result into a quantitative structural causal model that can learn from data to answer the question. We demonstrate the feasibility, accuracy and versatility of this approach using two case studies in systems biology. The first demonstrates the appropriateness of the underlying assumptions and the accuracy of the results. The second demonstrates the versatility of the approach by querying a knowledge base for the molecular determinants of a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-induced cytokine storm, and performing counterfactual inference to estimate the causal effect of medical countermeasures for severely ill patients.

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2020

Learning Koopman Representations for Hybrid Systems

The Koopman operator lifts nonlinear dynamical systems into a functional space of observables, where the dynamics are linear. In this paper, we provide three different Koopman representations for hybrid systems. The first is specific to switched systems, and the second and third preserve the original hybrid dynamics while eliminating the discrete state variables; the second approach is straightforward, and we provide conditions under which the transformation associated with the third holds. Eliminating discrete state variables provides computational benefits when using data-driven methods to learn the Koopman operator and its observables. Following this, we use deep learning to implement each representation on two test cases, discuss the challenges associated with those implementations, and propose areas of future work.

math.DS↗

arXiv2020

Learning Bounded Koopman Observables: Results on Stability, Continuity, and Controllability

The Koopman operator is an useful analytical tool for studying dynamical systems -- both controlled and uncontrolled. For example, Koopman eigenfunctions can provide non-local stability information about the underlying dynamical system. Koopman representations of nonlinear systems are commonly calculated using machine learning methods, which seek to represent the Koopman eigenfunctions as a linear combinations of nonlinear state measurements. As such, it is important to understand whether, in principle, these eigenfunctions can be successfully obtained using machine learning and what eigenfunctions calculated in this way can tell us about the underlying system. To that end, this paper presents an analysis of continuity, stability and control limitations associated with Koopman eigenfunctions under minimal assumptions and provides a discussion that relates these properties to the ability to calculate Koopman representations with machine learning.

math.DS↗

arXiv2019

Koopman Representations of Dynamic Systems with Control

The design and analysis of optimal control policies for dynamical systems can be complicated by nonlinear dependence in the state variables. Koopman operators have been used to simplify the analysis of dynamical systems by mapping the flow of the system onto a space of observables where the dynamics are linear (and possibly infinte). This paper focuses on the development of consistent Koopman representations for controlled dynamical system. We introduce the concept of dynamical consistency for Koopman representations and analyze several existing and proposed representations deriving necessary constraints on the dynamical system, observables, and Koopman operators. Our main result is a hybrid formulation which independently and jointly observes the state and control inputs. This formulation admits a relatively large space of dynamical systems compared to earlier formulations while keeping the Koopman operator independent of the state and control inputs. More generally, this work provides an analysis framework to evaluate and rank proposed simplifications to the general Koopman representation for controlled dynamical systems.

math.DS↗

arXiv2018

The Outer Product Structure of Neural Network Derivatives

In this paper, we show that feedforward and recurrent neural networks exhibit an outer product derivative structure but that convolutional neural networks do not. This structure makes it possible to use higher-order information without needing approximations or infeasibly large amounts of memory, and it may also provide insights into the geometry of neural network optima. The ability to easily access these derivatives also suggests a new, geometric approach to regularization. We then discuss how this structure could be used to improve training methods, increase network robustness and generalizability, and inform network compression methods.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2018

Hypergames and Cyber-Physical Security for Control Systems

The identification of the Stuxnet worm in 2010 provided a highly publicized example of a cyber attack used to damage an industrial control system physically. This raised public awareness about the possibility of similar attacks against other industrial targets -- including critical infrastructure. In this paper, we use hypergames to analyze how adversarial perturbations, like those used by Stuxnet, can be used to manipulate a system that employs optimal control. Hypergames form an extension of game theory that enables us to model strategic interactions where the players may have significantly different perceptions of the game(s) they are playing. Past work with hypergames has been limited to relatively simple interactions consisting of a small set of discrete choices for each player, but here, we apply hypergames to larger systems with continuous variables. We find that manipulating constraints can be a more effective attacker strategy than directly manipulating objective function parameters. Moreover, the attacker need not change the underlying system to carry out a successful attack -- it may be sufficient to deceive the defender controlling the system. It is possible to scale our approach up to even larger systems, but the ability to do so will depend on the characteristics of the system in question, and we identify several characteristics that will make those systems amenable to hypergame analysis.

eess.SY↗