San Kim, Won Chang, Daniel B. Forger +1math.NA stat.ML
Filtering combines model predictions with measurements to estimate the probability density function (PDF) of a system state over time. The PDF often becomes highly asymmetric and even multimodal in nonlinear systems with oscillatory or chaotic dynamics. Such non-Gaussian features violate the single-Gaussian assumption underlying Kalman-type filters. To address this problem, Gaussian mixture filtering has been proposed. However, accurately propagating mixture components and adaptively adjusting their number and weights over time remain open challenges. Here, we develop an adaptive split-combine Gaussian mixture filter (AMF) that estimates the time evolution of asymmetric and multimodal PDFs by adaptively splitting and combining Gaussian particles without auxiliary online numerical optimization. Notably, the proposed splitting method guarantees a reduction in variance along a target level-set-point direction of a Gaussian particle. This enables accurate and efficient propagation of particles. We show that AMF consistently outperforms various baseline filters across diverse benchmarks, including single and coupled slow-fast Van der Pol oscillators and the Lorenz attractor. We also propose a parallel implementation of AMF, allowing high-fidelity PDF estimation with practical computational cost.
Nonlinear state estimation requires sequentially fusing model-based predictions with noisy measurements. Under imperfect dynamics and unknown, time-varying noise statistics, this fusion can degrade in both accuracy and statistical consistency. Existing learning-aided filters largely treat accuracy and uncertainty estimation separately, limiting their ability to correct model-mismatch-induced bias while retaining an explicit, calibrated posterior covariance. This paper introduces Unscented KalmanNet (UKN), a model-based deep learning architecture that extends the Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) with learned mechanisms for these two sources of filtering error while preserving explicit posterior covariance propagation. NoiseNet learns time-varying process and measurement covariances as bounded multiplicative corrections to baseline covariances, guaranteeing positive definiteness, while GainNet learns a bounded residual correction to the analytical UKF gain to compensate for model-mismatch-induced bias. A calibration-aware training objective couples state error with posterior covariance and innovation consistency terms through adaptive weighting, jointly optimizing accuracy and calibration. UKN is benchmarked against UKF, KalmanNet, and Bayesian KalmanNet on three synthetic systems and real-flight UZH-FPV data. It achieves the lowest state-estimation error in all four examples and reduces RMSE by 26.4-49.7% compared with UKF in the synthetic cases. Leave-one-sequence-out cross-validation over 11 flights shows 22.4% and 34.3% reductions in mean position and velocity RMSE, respectively. UKN also yields the lowest fold-to-fold variability, with dimension-normalized NEES and empirical coverage closest to nominal values among covariance-reporting filters. These results show that structured learned adaptation improves estimation accuracy while retaining calibrated uncertainty.
The state of a dynamic system evolves over time, switching among several latent modes that govern its observable behavior. Filtering methods infer the latent state from observations. Classical filtering approaches, including Kalman filters, typically rely on simple observation models, such as linear-Gaussian models, that are incapable of characterizing the increasingly nonlinear and heterogeneous patterns in high-dimensional sensor signals. To tackle the challenge, we propose Generative Bayesian Filtering (GBF), a filtering framework that replaces restrictive observation models with pretrained conditional generative models parametrized by conditional variational autoencoders (CVAE). For online inference, GBF performs a Bayesian prediction-update recursion in which the measurement update is formulated as a posterior sampling problem that combines the dynamical prior with the CVAE-induced likelihood. The resulting filtering problem is then transformed into a score-based sampling problem, which naturally inherits the flexibility from generative models and the uncertainty quantification capabilities from ensembling. Experiments on synthetic datasets and real-world applications involving manufacturing system monitoring and arrhythmia diagnosis demonstrate that GBF improves state estimation accuracy and robustness relative to baseline approaches.
Traditional variational Kalman filtering with unknown noise statistics suffers from inconsistent process covariance estimation and slow convergence speed, limiting its practical utility. To address these issues, we introduce a surrogate variable representing the process-noise-free state, which enables explicit modeling and inference of process noise statistics. In addition, we reformulate the conventional coordinate ascent variation inference (CAVI) as a marginalized maximum a posteriori problem, followed by a single-step hyperparameter fitting. This reformulation obviates the need for multiple inner iterations inherent to CAVI and decouples the design of the covariance tracking filters. Consequently, this architecture permits the deployment of higher-order filters for covariance tracking and enables sliding-window hyperparameter estimation. Notably, when this window encompasses all historical data, the covariance tracking estimator intrinsically operates as a zero-phase filter. Numerical simulations validate the theoretical framework, demonstrating the enhanced convergence speed and superior estimation accuracy compared with existing methods.
Kalman filters based on the Embedded Latent Transfer Operators (ELTO) emerge as novel statistical tools for sequential state estimation. However, a critical limitation stems from their use of simplified noise models, which fail to dynamically adapt to non-stationary processes. To address this limitation, we introduce an ELTO-based Bayesian filtering approach with a new structured parameterization for the filter's noise model. This parameterization enables structured noise adaptation, which couples the data-driven learning of an optimal time-invariant noise model with dynamic parameter adaptation that responds to changes in dynamics within non-stationary processes. Empirical results show that our structured noise adaptation improves the filter's dynamic state estimation performance in noisy, time-varying environments.