Recurrent models are becoming a popular choice for video enhancement tasks such as video denoising. In this work, we focus on their stability as dynamical systems and show that they tend to fail catastrophically at inference time on long video sequen
ces. To address this issue, we (1) introduce a diagnostic tool which produces adversarial input sequences optimized to trigger instabilities and that can be interpreted as visualizations of spatio-temporal receptive fields, and (2) propose two approaches to enforce the stability of a model: constraining the spectral norm or constraining the stable rank of its convolutional layers. We then introduce Stable Rank Normalization of the Layers (SRNL), a new algorithm that enforces these constraints, and verify experimentally that it successfully results in stable recurrent video processing.
In this paper, we describe sufficient conditions when block-diagonal solutions to Lyapunov and $mathcal{H}_{infty}$ Riccati inequalities exist. In order to derive our results, we define a new type of comparison systems, which are positive and are com
puted using the state-space matrices of the original (possibly nonpositive) systems. Computing the comparison system involves only the calculation of $mathcal{H}_{infty}$ norms of its subsystems. We show that the stability of this comparison system implies the existence of block-diagonal solutions to Lyapunov and Riccati inequalities. Furthermore, our proof is constructive and the overall framework allows the computation of block-diagonal solutions to these matrix inequalities with linear algebra and linear programming. Numerical examples illustrate our theoretical results.
Semidefinite and sum-of-squares (SOS) optimization are fundamental computational tools in many areas, including linear and nonlinear systems theory. However, the scale of problems that can be addressed reliably and efficiently is still limited. In th
is paper, we introduce a new notion of emph{block factor-width-two matrices} and build a new hierarchy of inner and outer approximations of the cone of positive semidefinite (PSD) matrices. This notion is a block extension of the standard factor-width-two matrices, and allows for an improved inner-approximation of the PSD cone. In the context of SOS optimization, this leads to a block extension of the emph{scaled diagonally dominant sum-of-squares (SDSOS)} polynomials. By varying a matrix partition, the notion of block factor-width-two matrices can balance a trade-off between the computation scalability and solution quality for solving semidefinite and SOS optimization. Numerical experiments on large-scale instances confirm our theoretical findings.
In this paper, we introduce a set of block factor-width-two matrices, which is a generalisation of factor-width-two matrices and is a subset of positive semidefinite matrices. The set of block factor-width-two matrices is a proper cone and we compute
a closed-form expression for its dual cone. We use these cones to build hierarchies of inner and outer approximations of the cone of positive semidefinite matrices. The main feature of these cones is that they enable a decomposition of a large semidefinite constraint into a number of smaller semidefinite constraints. As the main application of these classes of matrices, we envision large-scale semidefinite feasibility optimisation programs including sum-of-squares (SOS) programs. We present numerical examples from SOS optimisation showcasing the properties of this decomposition.
In many applications, and in systems/synthetic biology, in particular, it is desirable to compute control policies that force the trajectory of a bistable system from one equilibrium (the initial point) to another equilibrium (the target point), or i
n other words to solve the switching problem. It was recently shown that, for monotone bistable systems, this problem admits easy-to-implement open-loop solutions in terms of temporal pulses (i.e., step functions of fixed length and fixed magnitude). In this paper, we develop this idea further and formulate a problem of convergence to an equilibrium from an arbitrary initial point. We show that this problem can be solved using a static optimization problem in the case of monotone systems. Changing the initial point to an arbitrary state allows to build closed-loop, event-based or open-loop policies for the switching/convergence problems. In our derivations we exploit the Koopman operator, which offers a linear infinite-dimensional representation of an autonomous nonlinear system. One of the main advantages of using the Koopman operator is the powerful computational tools developed for this framework. Besides the presence of numerical solutions, the switching/convergence problem can also serve as a building block for solving more complicated control problems and can potentially be applied to non-monotone systems. We illustrate this argument on the problem of synchronizing cardiac cells by defibrillation. Potentially, our approach can be extended to problems with different parametrizations of control signals since the only fundamental limitation is the finite time application of the control signal.
In this paper, we study geometric properties of basins of attraction of monotone systems. Our results are based on a combination of monotone systems theory and spectral operator theory. We exploit the framework of the Koopman operator, which provides
a linear infinite-dimensional description of nonlinear dynamical systems and spectral operator-theoretic notions such as eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. The sublevel sets of the dominant eigenfunction form a family of nested forward-invariant sets and the basin of attraction is the largest of these sets. The boundaries of these sets, called isostables, allow studying temporal properties of the system. Our first observation is that the dominant eigenfunction is increasing in every variable in the case of monotone systems. This is a strong geometric property which simplifies the computation of isostables. We also show how variations in basins of attraction can be bounded under parametric uncertainty in the vector field of monotone systems. Finally, we study the properties of the parameter set for which a monotone system is multistable. Our results are illustrated on several systems of two to four dimensions.
The Chemical Master Equation (CME) is well known to provide the highest resolution models of a biochemical reaction network. Unfortunately, even simulating the CME can be a challenging task. For this reason more simple approximations to the CME have
been proposed. In this work we focus on one such model, the Linear Noise Approximation. Specifically, we consider implications of a recently proposed LNA time-scale separation method. We show that the reduced order LNA converges to the full order model in the mean square sense. Using this as motivation we derive a network structure preserving reduction algorithm based on structured projections. We present convex optimisation algorithms that describe how such projections can be computed and we discuss when structured solutions exits. We also show that for a certain class of systems, structured projections can be found using basic linear algebra and no optimisation is necessary. The algorithms are then applied to a linearised stochastic LNA model of the yeast glycolysis pathway.
In this paper, we investigate geometric properties of monotone systems by studying their isostables and basins of attraction. Isostables are boundaries of specific forward-invariant sets defined by the so-called Koopman operator, which provides a lin
ear infinite-dimensional description of a nonlinear system. First, we study the spectral properties of the Koopman operator and the associated semigroup in the context of monotone systems. Our results generalize the celebrated Perron-Frobenius theorem to the nonlinear case and allow us to derive geometric properties of isostables and basins of attraction. Additionally, we show that under certain conditions we can characterize the bounds on the basins of attraction under parametric uncertainty in the vector field. We discuss computational approaches to estimate isostables and basins of attraction and illustrate the results on two and four state monotone systems.
In this paper, we consider the systems with trajectories originating in the nonnegative orthant becoming nonnegative after some finite time transient. First we consider dynamical systems (i.e., fully observable systems with no inputs), which we call
eventually positive. We compute forward-invariant cones and Lyapunov functions for these systems. We then extend the notion of eventually positive systems to the input-output system case. Our extension is performed in such a manner, that some valuable properties of classical internally positive input-output systems are preserved. For example, their induced norms can be computed using linear programming and the energy functions have nonnegative derivatives.
In this paper, a link between monotonicity of deterministic dynamical systems and propagation of order by Markov processes is established. The order propagation has received considerable attention in the literature, however, this notion is still not
fully understood. The main contribution of this paper is a study of the order propagation in the deterministic setting, which potentially can provide new techniques for analysis in the stochastic one. We take a close look at the propagation of the so-called increasing and increasing convex orders. Infinitesimal characterisations of these orders are derived, which resemble the well-known Kamke conditions for monotonicity. It is shown that increasing order is equivalent to the standard monotonicity, while the class of systems propagating the increasing convex order is equivalent to the class of monotone systems with convex vector fields. The paper is concluded by deriving a novel result on order propagating diffusion processes and an application of this result to biological processes.
