{"title":"Distributed Online Convex Optimization With Nonseparable Costs and Constraints","authors":"Zhaoye Pan;Haozhe Lei;Fan Zuo;Zilin Bian;Tao Li","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3696347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3696347","url":null,"abstract":"This letter studies distributed online convex optimization with time-varying coupled constraints, motivated by distributed online control in network systems. Most prior work assumes a separability condition: the global objective and coupled constraint functions are sums of local costs and individual constraints. In contrast, we study a group of agents, networked via a communication graph, that collectively select actions to minimize a sequence of <italic>nonseparable</i> global cost functions and satisfy <italic>nonseparable</i> long-term constraints, using full-information feedback and intra-agent communication. We propose a distributed online primal-dual belief consensus (<sc>dopbc</small>) algorithm, where each agent maintains and updates beliefs about the joint decisions and joint Lagrangian multipliers, which are repeatedly exchanged with neighboring agents. Under this belief-sharing protocol, <sc>dopbc</small> yields sublinear regret and cumulative constraint violation (<sc>ccv</small>) bounds, both in <inline-formula> <tex-math>$text {O}text {(}text {T}^{max {{1}-text {c},{,}text {c}}}text {)}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, where T denotes the time horizon, and c is a hyperparameter controlling step sizes. Such a result matches the lower bound of online constrained convex optimization when setting <inline-formula> <tex-math>$text {c}={1}/{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, indicating the online learning efficiency under nonseparability at the cost of communication overhead.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"391-396"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Geometry of Transmission Zeros in Distance-Based Formations","authors":"Solomon Goldgraber Casspi;Daniel Zelazo","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3704509","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3704509","url":null,"abstract":"This letter presents a geometric input-output analysis of distance-based formation control, focusing on steady-state signal blocking between actuator and sensor pairs. We characterize steady-state transmission zeros via the zero-frequency residue matrix of the linearized closed-loop dynamics, and show that for connected, flexible frameworks, such zeros occur only on a measure-zero algebraic set. For infinitesimally rigid formations, we derive an explicit geometric condition under which steady-state transmission is lost, showing that zeros occur if and only if the sensor lies on an affine hyperplane determined by the actuator and the formation geometry. Building on this result, we introduce the global transmission polygon, a convex region that provides a constructive sensor-placement rule guaranteeing full-rank steady-state transmission under arbitrary single-node excitations.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1069-1074"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biased Estimators: Asymptotic Domination Over Maximum Likelihood and Empirical-Bayes-Based Ridge Estimators","authors":"Yue Ju;Jiabao He;Bo Wahlberg;Håkan Hjalmarsson","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3710703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3710703","url":null,"abstract":"Maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and ridge regression are fundamental and widely used in system identification, statistics, and machine learning. This letter considers the ML estimator and the empirical-Bayes-based (EB-based) ridge estimator for the finite impulse response model. Generally, the mean squared error (MSE) of the ridge estimator has no closed-form expression, which makes finite-sample analysis challenging. We therefore focus on the large-sample regime and quantify the MSE difference between the ML and ridge estimators using the eXcess MSE (XMSE), a second-order asymptotic criterion. Let the EB-limit-based ridge estimator be the oracle using the limit (in sample size) of the EB hyper-parameter. We first conclude that this estimator asymptotically dominates the EB-based ridge estimator. We then study its asymptotic domination over the ML estimator, and show that an input-related factor is the alignment between the true model parameters and the Gram matrix limit, namely, how the model parameters align with the eigenvectors of the input covariance matrix. Conditions under which this asymptotic domination holds are also established. Moreover, when the Gram matrix limit is the identity, we develop non-oracle biased estimators, including a family of Bayes estimators, with XMSEs equal to or smaller than that of the EB-limit-based ridge estimator, and they therefore asymptotically dominate both the ML and EB-based ridge estimators. Numerical simulations illustrate the improved performance of the proposed biased estimators over the ML and EB-based ridge estimators.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1795-1800"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11598918","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Clustering of LTI Systems in the Presence of Output Measurement Outliers: A Variational EM Method","authors":"Xiaoquan Tang;Tianshi Chen","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3704418","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3704418","url":null,"abstract":"In this letter, we consider the clustering of LTI systems in the presence of output measurement outliers, and moreover the collected input-output data for each system is short and/or has low signal-to-noise ratio. To address the problem, we propose a Dirichlet process Student’s <inline-formula> <tex-math>$t$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mixture regression model (DPSMRM). Then a variational expectation-maximization method with adaptive truncation level is used for the inference of DPSMRM. Finally, we show the convergence of the accepted evidence lower bound sequence. The proposed method has the advantage that it can leverage the prior knowledge to mitigate the large variance of model estimates. Monte Carlo simulations show that under the considered setting, the proposed method outperforms other methods in terms of average clustering accuracy when the relative size and the occurrence probability of outliers are large.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1021-1026"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486534","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Data-Informativity for Stability of Ensemble Dynamics","authors":"Itsuki Kishi;Shoju Enami;Kenji Kashima","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3702671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3702671","url":null,"abstract":"Data-informativity has gained much attention as a data-driven approach that enables the direct assessment of system dynamics properties, such as stability, from collected data. Existing studies on data-informativity focus exclusively on data provided as time-series trajectories. In contrast, many practical applications, such as single-cell RNA sequencing, involve snapshot data, where the temporal evolution of individual entities is not trackable and only population distributions at discrete observation times are available. Motivated by this background, we propose a novel framework of data-informativity of snapshot data for stability. Although a sufficient condition for this setting can be derived by extending existing results, it requires enumerating all possible temporal evolutions, resulting in a computational burden of factorial order with respect to the number of data points. To overcome this issue, we derive computationally tractable criteria based on the snapshot data variance.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1033-1038"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11558430","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yuneil Yeo;Pietro Bonsanto;Masuma Mollika Miti;Maria Laura Delle Monache
{"title":"Optimal-Velocity-Based Car-Following Model With Control Lyapunov-Barrier Functions","authors":"Yuneil Yeo;Pietro Bonsanto;Masuma Mollika Miti;Maria Laura Delle Monache","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3686245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3686245","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops an optimization-based control framework for a microscopic nonlinear car-following model. The controller is obtained from a Control Lyapunov Function-Control Barrier Function-Quadratic Programming framework that enforces stability, velocity feasibility, and collision-avoidance constraints while minimizing control effort. The resulting controller mitigates the limitations of the spacing-dependent singularity-based car-following models and guarantees closed-loop safety and stability.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"283-288"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Distributed Energy and Thermal Management of Buildings With High-Order RC Thermal Dynamics","authors":"Zohreh Shahrouei;Diego Deplano;Elio Usai;Alessandro Pisano","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3708560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3708560","url":null,"abstract":"Energy and thermal management of a multi-zone building equipped with photovoltaic generation, battery energy storage system, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system is investigated. Building thermal dynamics are modeled by a Resistance-Capacitance network accounting for shared-wall coupling between zones. A multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem is formulated first to minimize electricity cost and thermal discomfort via weighted-sum scalarization, where binary variables enforce non-simultaneous grid import/export and battery charge/discharge. A formal proof of convex relaxation of the MILP into Linear Programming (LP) problem is given. Then, a convex distributed resource allocation problem solved via the Dual Consensus Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (DC-ADMM) is studied. Simulations on a five-zone building confirm that the LP matches the MILP optimum and that DC-ADMM converges to the centralized solution, validating the convex relaxation.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1717-1722"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Sensitivity of the Subspace Predictor to Behavioral Perturbations","authors":"Dian Jin;Jeremy Coulson","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3708583","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3708583","url":null,"abstract":"Behavioral systems define discrete-time Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) systems in terms of a set of trajectories, which forms a linear subspace. This subspace underlies the subspace predictor used in data-driven prediction and control. In practice, such subspaces are typically represented through data matrices. For robustness certification and uncertainty quantification, however, these matrix representations are coordinate-dependent and therefore do not provide a coordinate-free way to quantify uncertainty. In this work, we derive an explicit prediction error bound in terms of behavioral distance between the true subspace and an estimate, showing that the predictor is locally Lipschitz with respect to behavioral perturbations. We also present a one-step prediction error bound that is relevant for receding-horizon implementations, which becomes computable when combined with existing behavioral-distance certificates. Numerical studies show that our bound is tighter than an existing data-matrix perturbation bound, and remains computable, though more conservative, when combined with an existing behavioral distance certificate.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1609-1614"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148486699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Johannes Autenrieb;Peter A. Fisher;Anuradha Annaswamy
{"title":"Robust Safety Filters for Lipschitz-Bounded Adaptive Closed-Loop Systems With Structured Uncertainties","authors":"Johannes Autenrieb;Peter A. Fisher;Anuradha Annaswamy","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3706447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3706447","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive control provides closed-loop stability and reference tracking for uncertain dynamical systems through online parameter adaptation. These properties alone, however, do not ensure safety in the sense of forward invariance of state constraints, particularly during transient phases of adaptation. Control barrier function (CBF)–based safety filters have been proposed to address this limitation, but existing approaches often rely on conservative constraint tightening or static safety margins within quadratic program formulations. This letter proposes a reference-based adaptive safety framework for systems with structured parametric uncertainty that explicitly accounts for transient plant–reference mismatch. Safety is enforced at the reference level using a barrier-function-based filter, while adaptive control drives the plant to track the safety-certified reference. By exploiting Lipschitz bounds on the closed-loop tracking error dynamics, a tracking-error-dependent robust CBF condition is derived and equivalently reformulated as a convex second-order cone program (SOCP). The proposed safety-filter formulation reduces conservatism relative to fixed-margin CBF formulations by rendering the resulting safety constraints progressively less restrictive as the plant–reference tracking error decreases, while preserving formal guarantees of forward invariance and closed-loop stability.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"1765-1770"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148487231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Liraz Mudrik;Isaac Kaminer;Sean Kragelund;Abram H. Clark
{"title":"Saddle Point Evasion via Curvature-Regularized Gradient Dynamics","authors":"Liraz Mudrik;Isaac Kaminer;Sean Kragelund;Abram H. Clark","doi":"10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3701094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/LCSYS.2026.3701094","url":null,"abstract":"Nonconvex optimization underlies many modern machine learning and control tasks, where saddle points pose the dominant obstacle to reliable convergence in high-dimensional settings. Escaping these saddle points deterministically using continuous-time optimization remains an open challenge: gradient descent is blind to curvature, stochastic perturbation methods lack deterministic guarantees, and Newton-type approaches suffer from Hessian singularity. Adopting the perspective of viewing optimization algorithms as dynamical systems, we present Curvature-Regularized Gradient Dynamics (CRGD), which augments the objective with a smooth penalty on the negative Hessian eigenvalues, yielding an augmented cost that serves as an optimization Lyapunov function with user-selectable convergence rates to second-order stationary points. Numerical experiments confirm that CRGD converges to second-order stationary points, even in regimes where gradient descent fails.","PeriodicalId":37235,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Control Systems Letters","volume":"10 ","pages":"625-630"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148488199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}