Learned Lifted Linearization Applied to Unstable Dynamic Systems
Enabled by Koopman Direct Encoding
Jerry Ng1, H. Harry Asada2,Fellow, IEEE
Abstract— This paper presents a Koopman lifting lineariza-
tion method that is applicable to nonlinear dynamical sys-
tems having both stable and unstable regions. It is known
that Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) and its extended
methods are often unable to model unstable systems accurately
and reliably. Here we solve the problem through merging
three methodologies: decomposition of a lifted linear system
into stable and unstable modes, deep learning of a dictionary
of observable functions in the separated subspaces, and a
new formula for obtaining the Koopman operator, called
Direct Encoding. Two sets of effective observable functions
are obtained through neural net training where the training
data are separated into stable and unstable trajectories. The
resultant learned observables are used for lifting the state
space, and a linear state transition matrix is constructed
using Direct Encoding where inner products of the learned
observables are computed. The proposed method shows a
dramatic improvement over existing DMD and data-driven
methods. Furthermore, a method is developed for determining
the boundaries between stable and unstable regions.
Index Terms— Koopman operator, Lifting linearization, Neu-
ral net observables, Koopman direct encoding
I. INTRODUCTION
Lifting linearization methods, such as those based on the
Koopman Operator, have been used to transform nonlinear
systems to linear models. The theory states that the linear
model becomes exact in modeling a nonlinear system as
the order of the linear model approaches infinity, though
some nonlinear systems have finite order representations
in lifted space [1], [2]. The Koopman Operator models
are generally constructed through data-driven methods such
as Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) [3].
These Koopman-DMD methods have been applied to non-
autonomous systems to construct linear dynamic models that
allow us to apply various linear control methods, such as
linear model predictive control (MPC), to nonlinear control
systems [4].
A key component necessary to constructing a Koopman
Operator-based linear model is selection of the observable
functions that lift the state space. Prior work has studied
the use of various function families as observables, such as
polynomial basis functions, radial basis functions and time
delays [5]–[7] . There have also been formulas created for
algorithmically determining useful observables based on the
dataset [8], [9]. Modern machine learning techniques have
This material is based upon work supported by National Science Foun-
dation Grant NSF-CMMI 2021625.
1Jerry Ng is with Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology jerryng@mit.edu
2H. Harry Asada is with Department of Mechanical Engineering at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology asada@mit.edu
been applied to learn observable functions with significant
success [10]–[12].
However, it can be difficult to formulate accurate approx-
imations of the Koopman Operator for nonlinear systems
that produce both stable and unstable trajectories. A passive
dynamic walker, for example, is essentially an unstable
system, but it can walk stably if it starts within a stable
region [13]. When concerned with only the stable regions
of a nonlinear system, methods have been developed to
construct stable Koopman models from unstable data-driven
models for systems that are known to be stable [14]–[17].
However, these methods are not applicable when needing
to predict stable trajectories for a system with unstable
regions. A key difficulty is to capture a proper dataset that
represents diverse behaviors involved in stable and unstable
trajectories. Because of the nature of unstable trajectories,
a bias towards the unstable modes can often occur when
creating the Koopman model.
Prior work discusses the potential for Koopman Oper-
ator models to describe unstable subspaces [1]. This pa-
per presents a methodology for constructing an accurate
Koopman model for nonlinear systems with both stable
and unstable regions through separation of a lifted space
into stable and unstable subspaces. Two sets of effective
observables are learned separately and superposed to con-
struct a complete model. In addition, a method will be
developed for determining a boundary between stable and
unstable regions in the original state space by analyzing
the Koopman Operator Model using modal decomposition,
which is made possible with the effective construction of
observable functions.
The current work presents two significant contributions.
One is a novel training method of subspace specific observ-
able generation (SSOG) via a neural network. The other
is application of a new formula, called Direct Encoding
[18], for obtaining Koopman Operator models through inner
product computations instead of least squares estimate.
In the following, the Koopman Direct Encoding is briefly
described in Section II, followed by the development of
the SSOG algorithm based on space separation, observable
training, and model construction using the Direct Encoding
(Section III). Numerical experiments are presented in Section
IV, and the results will be discussed in Section V.
II. KOOPMAN DIRECT ENCODING OF NONLINEAR
DYNAMICS
In this section, we give a brief overview of the Koop-
man Operator and introduce the direct encoding method
arXiv:2210.13602v2 [cs.LG] 16 Jan 2023