This work aims to improve generalization and interpretability of dynamical systems by recovering the underlying lower-dimensional latent states and their time evolutions. Previous work on disentangled representation learning within the realm of dynamical systems focused on the latent states, possibly with linear transition approximations. As such, they cannot identify nonlinear transition dynamics, and hence fail to reliably predict complex future behavior. Inspired by the advances in nonlinear ICA, we propose a state-space modeling framework in which we can identify not just the latent states but also the unknown transition function that maps the past states to the present. We introduce a practical algorithm based on variational auto-encoders and empirically demonstrate in realistic synthetic settings that we can (i) recover latent state dynamics with high accuracy, (ii) correspondingly achieve high future prediction accuracy, and (iii) adapt fast to new environments.

本文旨在通过恢复底层的低维潜在状态及其时间演化来改进动力系统的泛化能力和解释能力。我们提出了一种基于变分自编码器的实用算法，并在逼真的合成环境中进行了实证研究，证明我们能够高准确性地恢复潜在状态动力学，相应地实现高未来预测准确性，并且能够快速适应新环境。

非线性动力系统中的潜在状态转变识别