We study necessary and sufficient conditions for contraction and incremental stability of dynamical systems with respect to non-Euclidean norms. First, we introduce weak pairings as a framework to study contractivity with respect to arbitrary norms, and characterize their properties. We introduce and study the sign and max pairings for the $\ell_1$ and $\ell_\infty$ norms, respectively. Using weak pairings, we establish five equivalent characterizations for contraction, including the one-sided Lipschitz condition for the vector field as well as matrix measure and Demidovich conditions for the corresponding Jacobian. Third, we extend our contraction framework in two directions: we prove equivalences for contraction of continuous vector fields and we formalize the weaker notion of equilibrium contraction, which ensures exponential convergence to an equilibrium. Finally, as an application, we provide (i) incremental input-to-state stability and finite input-state gain properties for contracting systems, and (ii) a general theorem about the Lipschitz interconnection of contracting systems, whereby the Hurwitzness of a gain matrix implies the contractivity of the interconnected system.
The design of fixed point algorithms is at the heart of monotone operator theory, convex analysis, and of many modern optimization problems arising in machine learning and control. This tutorial reviews recent advances in understanding the relationship between Demidovich conditions, one-sided Lipschitz conditions, and contractivity theorems. We review the standard contraction theory on Euclidean spaces as well as little-known results for Riemannian manifolds. Special emphasis is placed on the setting of non-Euclidean norms and the recently introduced weak pairings for the $\ell_1$ and $\ell_\i…
In this note we study contractivity of monotone systems and exponential convergence of positive systems using non-Euclidean norms. We first introduce the notion of conic matrix measure as a framework to study stability of monotone and positive systems. We study properties of the conic matrix measures and investigate their connection with weak pairings and standard matrix measures. Using conic matrix measures and weak pairings, we characterize contractivity and incremental stability of monotone systems with respect to non-Euclidean norms. Moreover, we use conic matrix measures to provide suffic…
Politecnico di Torino（都灵理工大学）；Institute for Problems in Mechanical Engineering, Russian Academy of Sciences（俄罗斯科学院机械工程问题研究所）
Implicit neural networks, a.k.a., deep equilibrium networks, are a class of implicit-depth learning models where function evaluation is performed by solving a fixed point equation. They generalize classic feedforward models and are equivalent to infinite-depth weight-tied feedforward networks. While implicit models show improved accuracy and significant reduction in memory consumption, they can suffer from ill-posedness and convergence instability. This paper provides a new framework, which we call Non-Euclidean Monotone Operator Network (NEMON), to design well-posed and robust implicit neural…
Input-to-State Stability Implications in Contraction Theory
Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University（广岛大学先进理工学研究科）；Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation, University of California, Santa Barbara（加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校机械工程系及控制、动力学系统与计算中心）
In this paper, we develop a novel contraction framework for stability analysis of discrete-time nonlinear systems with parameters following stochastic processes. For general stochastic processes, we first provide a sufficient condition for uniform incremental exponential stability (UIES) in the first moment with respect to a Riemannian metric. Then, focusing on the Euclidean distance, we present a necessary and sufficient condition for UIES in the second moment. By virtue of studying general stochastic processes, we can readily derive UIES conditions for special classes of processes, e.g., i.i…
Contraction Theory for Nonlinear Stability Analysis and Learning-based Control: A Tutorial Overview
Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA（加州理工学院工程与应用科学系）；Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA（加州理工学院喷气推进实验室）；Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA, USA（麻省理工学院非线性系统实验室）
We investigate the incremental stability properties of Itô stochastic dynamical systems. Specifically, we derive a stochastic version of nonlinear contraction theory that provides a bound on the mean square distance between any two trajectories of a stochastically contracting system. This bound can be expressed as a function of the noise intensity and the contraction rate of the noise-free system. We illustrate these results in the contexts of stochastic nonlinear observers design and stochastic synchronization.
Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, Caltech（加州理工学院研究生航空航天实验室）；Nonlinear Systems Laboratory, MIT（麻省理工学院非线性系统实验室）；Reliable Autonomous System Laboratory, MIT（麻省理工学院可靠自主系统实验室）
This paper presents a theoretical overview of a Neural Contraction Metric (NCM): a neural network model of an optimal contraction metric and corresponding differential Lyapunov function, the existence of which is a necessary and sufficient condition for incremental exponential stability of non-autonomous nonlinear system trajectories. Its innovation lies in providing formal robustness guarantees for learning-based control frameworks, utilizing contraction theory as an analytical tool to study the nonlinear stability of learned systems via convex optimization. In particular, we rigorously show …
Contraction analysis is a stability theory for nonlinear systems where stability is defined incrementally between two arbitrary trajectories. It provides an alternative framework in which to study uncertain interconnections or systems with external inputs, where it offers several significant advantages when compared with traditional Lyapunov analysis. Contraction-based methods are particularly useful for analyzing systems with uncertain parameters and for proving synchronization properties of nonlinear oscillators. Existence of a contraction metric for a given system is a necessary and suffici…
This tutorial paper provides an introduction to recently developed tools for machine learning, especially learning dynamical systems (system identification), with stability and robustness constraints. The main ideas are drawn from contraction analysis and robust control, but adapted to problems in which large-scale models can be learnt with behavioural guarantees. We illustrate the methods with applications in robust image recognition and system identification.
In this paper, incremental exponential asymptotic stability of a class of switched Carathéodory nonlinear systems is studied based on the novel concept of measure of switched matrices via multiple norms and the transaction coefficients between these norms. This model is rather general and includes the case of staircase switching signals as a special case. Sufficient conditions are derived for incremental stability allowing for the system to be incrementally exponentially asymptotically stable even if some of its modes are unstable in some time periods. Numerical examples on switched linear sys…
This paper presents a new deep learning-based framework for robust nonlinear estimation and control using the concept of a Neural Contraction Metric (NCM). The NCM uses a deep long short-term memory recurrent neural network for a global approximation of an optimal contraction metric, the existence of which is a necessary and sufficient condition for exponential stability of nonlinear systems. The optimality stems from the fact that the contraction metrics sampled offline are the solutions of a convex optimization problem to minimize an upper bound of the steady-state Euclidean distance between…
For discrete-time systems, governed by Kraus maps, the work of D. Petz has characterized the set of universal contraction metrics. In the present paper, we use this characterization to derive a set of quadratic Lyapunov functions for continuous-time systems, governed by Lindblad differential equations, that have a steady-state with full rank. An extremity of this set is given by the Bures metric, for which the quadratic Lyapunov function is obtained by inverting a Sylvester equation. We illustrate the method by providing a strict Lyapunov function for a Lindblad equation designed to stabilize …
A Nonlinear Separation Principle via Contraction Theory: Applications to Neural Networks, Control, and Learning
Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation, UC Santa Barbara（控制、动态系统与计算中心，加州大学圣巴巴拉分校）；Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino（电子与电信系，托里诺理工学院）；Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University（先进科学与工程研究生院，广岛大学）
In this paper we extend to a generic class of piecewise smooth dynamical systems a fundamental tool for the analysis of convergence of smooth dynamical systems: contraction theory. We focus on switched systems satisfying Caratheodory conditions for the existence and unicity of a solution. After generalizing the classical definition of contraction to this class of dynamical systems, we give sufficient conditions for global exponential convergence of their trajectories. The theoretical results are then applied to solve a set of representative problems including proving global asymptotic stabilit…
The Primal-Dual (PD) algorithm is widely used in convex optimization to determine saddle points. While the stability of the PD algorithm can be easily guaranteed, strict contraction is nontrivial to establish in most cases. This work focuses on continuous, possibly non-autonomous PD dynamics arising in a network context, in distributed optimization, or in systems with multiple time-scales. We show that the PD algorithm is indeed strictly contracting in specific metrics and analyze its robustness establishing stability and performance guarantees for different approximate PD systems. We derive e…
Stochastic contraction analysis is a recently developed tool for studying the global stability properties of nonlinear stochastic systems, based on a differential analysis of convergence in an appropriate metric. To date, stochastic contraction results and sharp associated performance bounds have been established only in the specialized context of state-independent metrics, which restricts their applicability. This paper extends stochastic contraction analysis to the case of general time- and state-dependent Riemannian metrics, in both discrete-time and continuous-time settings, thus extending…
Incremental stability is a property of dynamical and control systems, requiring the uniform asymptotic stability of every trajectory, rather than that of an equilibrium point or a particular time-varying trajectory. Similarly to stability, Lyapunov functions and contraction metrics play important roles in the study of incremental stability. In this paper, we provide characterizations and descriptions of incremental stability in terms of existence of coordinate-invariant notions of incremental Lyapunov functions and contraction metrics, respectively. Most design techniques providing controllers…
We investigate the stability properties of discrete and hybrid stochastic nonlinear dynamical systems. More precisely, we extend the stochastic contraction theorems (which were formulated for continuous systems) to the case of discrete and hybrid resetting systems. In particular, we show that the mean square distance between any two trajectories of a discrete (or hybrid resetting) contracting stochastic system is upper-bounded by a constant after exponential transients. Using these results, we study the synchronization of noisy nonlinear oscillators coupled by discrete noisy interactions.
